ABSTRACT
Through an analysis of a wide array of contemporary Chinese literature from inside and outside of China, this volume considers some of the ways in which China and Chineseness are understood and imagined.
Using the central theme of the way in which literature has the potential to both reinforce and to undermine a national imaginary, the volume contains chapters offering new perspectives on well-known authors, from Jin Yucheng to Nobel Prize winning Mo Yan, as well as chapters focusing on authors rarely included in discussions of contemporary Chinese literature, such as the expatriate authors Larissa Lai and Xiaolu Guo. The volume is complemented by chapters covering more marginalized literary figures throughout history, such as Macau-born poet Yiling, the Malaysian-born novelist Zhang Guixing, and the ethnically Korean author Kim Hak-ch’ŏl. Invested in issues ranging from identity and representation, to translation and grammar, it is one of the few publications of its kind devoting comparable attention to authors from Mainland China, authors from Manchuria, Macau, and Taiwan, and throughout the global Chinese diaspora.
Reading China Against the Grain: Imagining Communities is a rich resource of literary criticism for students and scholars of Chinese studies, sinophone studies, and comparative literature
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |14 pages
Introduction
part I|57 pages
Mainland China
chapter 3|18 pages
Frankenstein vs. Dracula
part II|86 pages
Border regions
chapter 6|22 pages
Writing the Motherland(s) on their Borders
chapter 7|16 pages
Keeping to the Margins
chapter 8|31 pages
Explaining “Graphs” and Analyzing “Characters”
part III|73 pages
The global Chinese diaspora