Wei, Joseph
TR 12:45 PM
Park Hall 0250
This course explores how Asian American writers confront the memory of war. We'll focus on literary representations of the Philippine-American War, Japanese American internment, the Korean War, and Vietnam War by “postmemory” Asian American writers, i.e., the generation after who write not through direct recollection but through imaginative investment and creation. What forms of representation do these writers invent to remember the war and uncover the silences and gaps in the historical record? What are the ethical and political limits of memorializing a war one did not directly live through? And what role does postmemory serve for collective identification, mourning, reckoning, and reconstruction around these wars? To address these questions, we’ll explore poetry, novels, short stories, and graphic novels by Asian American writers writing in the aftermath of U.S. wars in the Pacific. Authors may include: Carlos Bulosan, Gina Apostol, Mitsuye Yamada, Susan Choi, G.B. Tran, Anthony Veasna So, Ocean Vuong.