Book contents
- The Cambridge History ofAsian American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Early Forms of Expression to the Start of the Twentieth Century
- Part II The Exclusion Era, World War II, and the Immediate Postwar Era
- Part III The Asian American Movement
- Part IV Canons
- Part V Post-1965 and the Twenty-First Century
- Part VI Twenty-First Century: 9/11, Empire, and Other Challenges to Literature
- 29 The 9/11 of Our Imaginations: Islam, the Figure of the Muslim, and the Failed Liberalism of the Racial Present
- 30 Narrating War: Arab and Muslim American Aesthetics
- 31 Thick Time and Space: Karen Tei Yamashita’s Aesthetics
- 32 Asian American New Media as Literature for the Digital Age
- 33 Beyond National Literatures: Empire and Amitav Ghosh
- Bibliography
- Index
30 - Narrating War: Arab and Muslim American Aesthetics
from Part VI - Twenty-First Century: 9/11, Empire, and Other Challenges to Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2015
By
Book contents
- The Cambridge History ofAsian American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Early Forms of Expression to the Start of the Twentieth Century
- Part II The Exclusion Era, World War II, and the Immediate Postwar Era
- Part III The Asian American Movement
- Part IV Canons
- Part V Post-1965 and the Twenty-First Century
- Part VI Twenty-First Century: 9/11, Empire, and Other Challenges to Literature
- 29 The 9/11 of Our Imaginations: Islam, the Figure of the Muslim, and the Failed Liberalism of the Racial Present
- 30 Narrating War: Arab and Muslim American Aesthetics
- 31 Thick Time and Space: Karen Tei Yamashita’s Aesthetics
- 32 Asian American New Media as Literature for the Digital Age
- 33 Beyond National Literatures: Empire and Amitav Ghosh
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter expresses a distinct aesthetic of smallness and connectivity that emerges under the broader rubric of Asian American literature. The works discussed in the chapter enact authorial interventions in post-9/11 American literature and cultural mythologies. The intersecting aesthetics of smallness and connectivity suggest a counter sublime of benevolence. Naomi Shihab Nye, Wafaa Bilal, Mohsin Hamid, H. M. Naqvi, and Suheir Hammad, in their narrations of war and violence in the United States, Iraq, and Palestine, employ an aesthetic of smallness and connectivity as an oppositional stance to the ideological implications of the Kantian sublime that undergird the mainstream media's visual and verbal representations of US-Iraq War of violence. These authors' works distinguish themselves among post-9/11 writings both in their aesthetic strategies and in their ability to interrupt the continued mythologizing of Arabs and Muslims as alien, hostile presences in US literature and culture.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature , pp. 519 - 534Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015