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
- 5 Indian Diasporic Autobiography: New Nations and New Selves
- 6 Koreans in Exile: Younghill Kang and Richard E. Kim
- 7 Filipino and Filipina Voices
- 8 Chinatown Life as Contested Terrain: H. T. Tsiang, Jade Snow Wong, and C. Y. Lee
- 9 Coded Critiques: Japanese American Incarceration Literature
- 10 Asian American Short Fiction and the Contingencies of Form, 1930s–1960s
- 11 The Chicago School and the Sociological Imagination
- 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
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Indian Diasporic Autobiography: New Nations and New Selves
from Part II - The Exclusion Era, World War II, and the Immediate Postwar Era
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2015
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
- 5 Indian Diasporic Autobiography: New Nations and New Selves
- 6 Koreans in Exile: Younghill Kang and Richard E. Kim
- 7 Filipino and Filipina Voices
- 8 Chinatown Life as Contested Terrain: H. T. Tsiang, Jade Snow Wong, and C. Y. Lee
- 9 Coded Critiques: Japanese American Incarceration Literature
- 10 Asian American Short Fiction and the Contingencies of Form, 1930s–1960s
- 11 The Chicago School and the Sociological Imagination
- 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
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Dhan Gopal Mukerji and Dalip Singh Saund, Indians who came to the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, write their selves through a sustained relationship to homeland and shift the central problematic of American autobiography. Caste and Outcaste and Congressman from India serve to remind that diaspora is not just a term of identity, like ethnic or immigrant, it is also a spatial term that invites speculation about different kinds of psychic and geographic territory. Mukerji relates to India through spirituality, while Saund does so through politics. Mukerji's and Saund's texts elaborate an America and an India very much in formation, and both their relatively early migration as well as their dwelling in California helps one think through the representational politics of relation, not to large ethnic communities of Indians but to a racial landscape that includes other minoritized peoples.
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- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature , pp. 107 - 122Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015