Is America in the Heart? : The Analysis of American Culture Perception in Three Recent Asian American Female Novels
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Since establishing the concept of nation, citizenship has been closely bound to national culture. When Asian immigrants first started arriving at the shores of the United States, they were met with demands for adopting not just new laws, but an entire new culture, one that was rooted in Christianity and various European traditions, most significantly the British one. Throughout Asian American history, acculturation pressures have taken various forms and degrees. They are currently presented as almost non-existent as liberals in the United States left the melting pot concept for the salad bowl model. However, while those idealistic efforts have born some fruit, Asian Americans still perceive being in the position of “the Other” in American culture. It is even more so when solely Asian American women are concerned, as they play the role of “the Other” in both Asian cultures and the American one. These tensions are visible also in their literature, which reflects their experience of both – on the one hand of sometimes perceiving themselves, and being perceived by others, fully as American citizens and, on the other hand, of being reminded of their foreign origin and the inability to be entirely accepted as true Americans at other times. This paper thus discusses acculturation and citizenship experience in three recent novels by Asian American women: Jean Kwok's Girl in Translation (2011), America Is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo (2018) and Nicole Chung's All You Can Ever Know (2019) – novels representing three (sub-)nationalities, three different socio-economic statuses, and three different points of view. The paper thus also analyses different acculturation coping strategies offered by Asian American characters in those novels. Together, they suggest possible attitudes of Asian American women towards American culture concepts and their own ideas of what Asian American, and consequently American, culture could and should look like nowadays. |
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