Modeling Minority Women: Heroines in African and Asian American Fiction

This book length study boldly challenges current models of ethnic-studies criticism and analyses of "ethnic" narrative subjectivity that emphasize the cultural politics of ethnic traditions. While examining African and Asian American women's poetics, this project offers an alternative critical method that focuses on patterns of "transcultural" and transnational heroine construction occurring as canonical nineteenth-century "anglo" narratives of femininity inform and interact with twentieth-century American expressions of feminine identity. This powerful study reconceptualizes ideas of ethnic literature while investigating the construction of ethnic heroines, shifting the focus away from cultural politics and considering instead narrative or poetic qualities which involve surprising relationships between Anglo-American women's writing and fiction produced by Asian American and African American women authors.