Incorporations of Chineseness: Hybridity, Bodies, and Chinese American Literature

Divided into two parts – the first a combination of historical introduction and theoretical analysis, the second consisting of comprehensive, in-depth, detailed close readings of representative literary works – this book is a unique bridge connecting the fields of Comparative Literature, Asian American Studies, and Asian Studies. Through a repositioning of the Chinese component of Asian America in relation to the transformations of Chinese identity in modern times, it reads Asian American literature and Asian American literary studies in the context of the historical events and geopolitical changes that have informed the construction of “Chineseness”.

Drawing on feminist theory, philosophy, narratology, and semiotics, the book focuses on the body as a point of interchange between collectivity and individuality, race and culture, matter and discourse. The body, as argued here, symbolically and narratively reflects, in the texts, the encounter between Chineseness and Americanness, revealing it as a matter germane to the construction of American multiculturalism, but simultaneously informed by the broader politics of the Chinese diaspora.

This book historicizes Chineseness from an ex-centric perspective, thus contributing to the understanding of its present, and re-focalizes Asian American literature from a non-US perspective, thus exploring the Asian American field with a comparative outlook. Overall, this work illuminates an aspect of the topical, and inevitably contemporary, dialogue of two major Pacific superpowers, the US and China.


Serena Fusco teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”, and has extensive experience in the field of international education. Her research work is transcontinental and multilingual in scope and centers on Asian and Chinese America, globalization, photography and intermediality, and more generally on the circulation of tropes that have a high level of crosscultural and metacultural potential.

"Incorporations of Chineseness represents a connection which, up until now, has been missing in bringing together a fruitful debate between the disciplines of comparative literature, Asian studies, and Asian-American literature. [...] With considerable capacity for synthesis and unique explanatory clarity, Serena Fusco outlines the development of Asian-American literature, emphasising its programmatic intentions, the multiple internal tensions which have punctuated its evolution, and its clear political connections and repercussions. [...] Demonstrating a profound awareness of contemporary citical discussion, Serena Fusco's book is of great value and any scholar who is interested in Asian-American literature or global Chinese literature should use it as a point of reference."

Elisabetta Marino Università di Roma Tor Vergata Iperstoria 7 (2016)

Buy This Book

ISBN: 1-4438-8909-1

ISBN13: 978-1-4438-8909-4

Release Date: 31st March 2016

Pages: 285

Price: £47.99

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