Contesting Genres in Contemporary Asian American Fiction

This book examines the influence of genre on contemporary Asian American literary production. Drawing on cultural theories of representation, social theories of identity, and poststructuralist genre theory, this study shows how popular prose fictions have severely constrained the development of Asian American literary aesthetics.

"The brilliance of Huang's work is that she makes readers rethink and reconsider genres that are often interfaced with and considered in reductive ways." - Asian American Literature Fans

"Huang does a masterful job of interrogating genre's relationship to knowledge production. In her efforts to develop a 'transformative Asian American politics of form,' Huang treats both established and emergent Asian American writers and through her focus on three highly structured types of genre fiction - immigrant fiction, crime fiction, and science fiction - she encourages critics to not just read familiar texts differently, but to read a variety of texts that don't currently rest easily within the rubric of 'Asian American literature.' This project should cement Huang's position as a leading scholar in the field of Asian American genre criticism." - Tina Chen, The Pennsylvania State University and author of Double Agency: Acts of Impersonation in Asian American Literature and Culture

"Contesting Genres in Contemporary Asian American Fiction broadens and invigorates critical studies of genres in Asian American literature, offering nuanced, theoretically informed analyses of generic characteristics, including those of crime fiction and science fiction. It makes a compelling argument for the necessity to understand genres as social constructs, as modes of knowledge production, and as disciplinary techniques of subject constitution." - Zhou Xiaojing, Professor of English, University of the Pacific

BETSY HUANG is Assistant Professor of English at Clark University, USA.