Asian-American Writers (Bloom's Modern Critical Views (Hardcover)) - Hardcover

Grade 9 Up—The essays in this volume draw attention to the diversity within the Asian communities of the United States and Canada by exploring how authors of various backgrounds represent themselves in literature. This edition sheds new light on established authors such as Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan, while sharing new insights about emerging authors of South and East Asian descent. Individual essays examine literature by North Americans of Pacific Island, Vietnamese, and South Asian descent. These selections follow Bloom's well-known appeal to examine literary works as aesthetic products instead of sociopolitical documents, but each scholar directly addresses how Asian-American writers reflect and shape their cultural identities in fiction. The entries make extensive use of academic jargon and contain notes and works cited, indicating that the volume is intended for scholarly audiences. Readers unfamiliar with the authors may glean useful facts, but the intent of each piece is to enrich students' understanding of works they already have read. This book will be most helpful in high school libraries serving students in advanced-placement literature courses, academic libraries, and public libraries with extensive research collections.—Mary Landrum, Lexington Public Library, KY END

"The accounts offer students an opportunity to absorb serious analytical styles."

"A publishing venture almost without precedent both in its scope and in the fact that it is guided by a single critical intelligence."

"Harold Bloom adds some fantastic critical literary guides, providing interpretations and issues that should reach a wide audience from adults to young adults at the high school and college levels."