(Re)presenting interracial sexuality: Race, sex, and discursive strategies in Sui Sin Far and Onoto Watanna
Abstract
My dissertation investigates how interracial sexuality is (re)figured in two of the earliest Asian American writers. Drawing on postcolonialism and cultural studies, theories of women's and minority writing, and history, I explore the ways in which Sui Sin Far and Watanna, as Eurasian women writers, intervene in, contest, or accommodate the dominant discourse of race, gender, and sexuality in turn-of-the-century American culture. Although the issue of interracial sexuality has long received critical attention in American literary scholarship, no comprehensive study has yet analyzed Asian American representations of Asian-white romance and sex vis-a-vis dominant representations. By focusing on this unexplored but important subject, my project contributes not only to the scholarship on the representation of interracial sexuality but also to the inquiries into the relationship between dominant figurations of the Other and nondominant interventions. To situate Sui Sin Far and Watanna within their historical, cultural, and literary milieu, I begin with a critique of the Yellow Peril and Orientalism as the two predominant discourses whereby turn-of-the-century Euro-American narratives of interracial romance and sex construct the Asian other. Chapter 2 examines the trickster strategies devised by Sui Sin Far and Watanna in their attempts to refigure a narrative that has formerly repressed the representation of Asian-male/white-female love and marriage. Chapter 3 looks at how the two writers rewrite the Butterfly story and disrupt the Orientalist fantasies in the master narrative. The final chapter considers (re)figurations of the Eurasian character, especially the ways in which Sui Sin Far and Watanna resist essentializing Eurasian positionality and explore the possibilities of fluid, multiple identities across racial and cultural boundaries.* *Originally published in DAI Vol. 59, No. 8. Reprinted here with corrected title.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Neufeldt, Purdue University.
Subject Area
American literature|Minority & ethnic groups|Sociology
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