Asian American Literature

Co-published by Routledge and Edition Synapse

American writers whose provenance lies in Asia have been producing and publishing work of interest and distinction for well over a century. However, in recent decades there has been an exponential growth in their output, and much Asian-American literature has now achieved new levels of both popular success and critical acclaim. Moreover, the burgeoning number of literary anthologies and academic studies attests to a growing and deepening scholarly attention. Indeed, Asian-American literature—and the serious critical work it has spawned—is now central to debates about national cultures, world civilizations, and transnational imaginations.

As research on and around Asian-American literature continues to flourish, this new title from Routledge answers the urgent need for an authoritative reference work to map its vast critical terrain. The collection will enable users to make sense of the rapidly growing, and ever more complex, corpus of scholarly literature which explores—among many others—dizzying questions about racial diversity and identity, cultural history, and literary value.

The collection is organized into four volumes. The first volume (‘Literary History: Criticism and Theory’) brings together the best work to define, explicitly or implicitly, the parameters of Asian-American literature. It addresses its political and aesthetic significance and major issues of contention. Volume II (‘Prose: Fiction and Non-Fiction’) brings together the best interpretive work and practical criticism on key works of Asian-American literature, both fictive and factual. Volume III (‘Poetry’) assembles the essential scholarship on Asian-American poetry, while the final volume in the collection (‘Drama and Performance’) collects the vital research on theatrical texts and performance pieces.

Asian-American Literature is fully indexed and includes a comprehensive new introduction by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. An indispensable reference collection, it is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital one-stop research and pedgagogic resource.