Asian American women's life writing: Autobiographical negotiations of inscrutability

Susan Muchshima Moynihan, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the autobiographical constructions of Asian American women as a site of knowledge production and of cultural and national investment. Autobiographical texts, also known as “life writing,” embody cultural, national and transnational concerns regarding identity, memory, and history. In addressing the question of what one can come to “know” about Asian American women's experiences and their historical contexts, I argue that a paradox of autobiographical reference characterizes these texts. The racist constructions of Asians and Asian Americans as inscrutable surfaces inform the referential dynamics in autobiographical self-representation; simultaneously, the historical feminization of the East foregrounds the dynamics of access and penetration, dynamics at work in the penetrating gaze of the consumer of autobiography. My dissertation contributes to the identification and analysis of this paradoxical condition of simultaneously embodying an inscrutable, impenetrable surface and the presumed penetrability associated with femininity and personal disclosure. My critical analysis of autobiographical texts by Meena Alexander, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Le Ly Hayslip, Chanrithy Him, Mary Paik Lee, Anchee Min and Yoshiko Uchida offers a way to dismantle traditional distinctions between the discourses of personal identity and history.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Curtis, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American literature|Biographies|American studies|Womens studies|Minority & ethnic groups|Sociology

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