Listed in: English, as ENGL-229
Victor W. Yang (Section 01)
This class is a place to be curious about Asian America: the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is a place where we’ll talk about the stereotypes, the surprises, the ways in which Asian Americans are invisible and hyper-visible, model and scapegoat, a lightning rod in the U.S. racial order, and—on college campuses like ours—the wedge by which Supreme Court recently ended affirmative action as we know it. Asian America today (and always) has been a site of struggle and resistance, and its shimmering brightness and splendor and tragedy are impossible to capture without exploring it in context with other communities of color.
In this class, we’ll be reading and writing about Asian America in BIPOC worlds. Our imaginations—and the craft of writing—will be the tools by which we will challenge mainstream narratives of race in this country. Be ready to write, and to write lots. We will exchange low-stakes writing each week, and for the latter half of the semester, we will draft personal essays for workshop and critique. Readings will draw from Asian American and other BIPOC writers of fiction and nonfiction such as Jenny Zhang, Anthony Veasna So, Naoko Shibusawa, Danielle Evans, Karla Villavicencio, Te-Ping Chen, and Yoon Choi.
Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Postdoctoral Fellow Yang.
How to handle overenrollment: the instructor will strive to achieve representativeness in terms of background, gender, major, class year, etc.
Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: emphasis on written work, readings, oral presentations, group work, artistic work.
Section 01
W 2:00 PM - 5:30 PM CHAP 205