Book contents
- Asian American Literature in Transition, 1930–1965
- Asian American Literature In Transition
- Asian American Literature in Transition, 1930–1965
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Series Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Transitions Approached through Concepts and History
- Chapter 1 The Popular Front and Asiatic Modes of Cultural Production
- Chapter 2 Asian American Realism
- Chapter 3 On Modernism, Decolonization, and Asian American Literature in Transition
- Chapter 4 The Cultures of Japanese Internment
- Chapter 5 The 1947 Partition, War, and Internment
- Chapter 6 Cold War Fiction
- Chapter 7 Desert, Island, Ocean, Swamp
- Part II Transitions Approached through Authors, Texts, Concepts, and History
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 1 - The Popular Front and Asiatic Modes of Cultural Production
from Part I - Transitions Approached through Concepts and History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 May 2021
- Asian American Literature in Transition, 1930–1965
- Asian American Literature In Transition
- Asian American Literature in Transition, 1930–1965
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Series Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Transitions Approached through Concepts and History
- Chapter 1 The Popular Front and Asiatic Modes of Cultural Production
- Chapter 2 Asian American Realism
- Chapter 3 On Modernism, Decolonization, and Asian American Literature in Transition
- Chapter 4 The Cultures of Japanese Internment
- Chapter 5 The 1947 Partition, War, and Internment
- Chapter 6 Cold War Fiction
- Chapter 7 Desert, Island, Ocean, Swamp
- Part II Transitions Approached through Authors, Texts, Concepts, and History
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter connects Asian American literature to the revolutionary cultural and political networks associated with the Popular Front and Soviet Union of the interwar years. The chapter begins by noting the relative absence of Asian Americans from these networks through a discussion of Carlos Bulosan, whose writings were forced to navigate constraining Popular Front representations of Asia and Asians. The chapter then turns to the author and actor H. T. Tsiang, whose combinations of realism and exoticism are shown to echo both Soviet socialist realism and Karl Marx’s notion of the “Asiatic Mode of Production.” The latter emerges as a tool used by Tsiang to nuance Marxist revolution: to think beyond the linear revolutionary scheme disastrously applied to China by the Soviet-led Comintern; and beyond the limits of Popular Front literary norms. The result is a flexible, inclusive vision of the interwar international left, one attendant to vernacular histories and traditions.
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- Information
- Asian American Literature in Transition, 1930–1965 , pp. 19 - 37Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021