Karen Kuo: East Is West and West Is East

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" vlink="#CC0000" alink="#CC0000"><center><hr width="350" size="1" align="center" noshade>How race, gender, and sexuality were reimagined in the interwar encounters of Asians and Americans<hr width="350" size="1" align="center" noshade><p><a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/ChicagoBook.aspx?ISBN=9781439905869&&PRESS=temple" target="_top">Buy this book!</a> | <a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/Cart.aspx?PRESS=temple" target="_top">View Cart</a> | <a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/Cart.aspx?PRESS=temple" target="_top">Check Out</a></p><p><img src="1518_reg.gif" height=200 border=1 vspace=4></p></center><h1>East Is West and West Is East</h1> <H2>Gender, Culture, and Interwar Encounters between Asia and America</H2> <h3>Karen Kuo</h3> <P>cloth 1-4399-0586-X $74.50, Oct 12, <FONT COLOR=#990033>Available</FONT> <br>paper 1-4399-0587-8 $26.95, Oct 12, <FONT COLOR=#990033>Available</FONT> <br>Electronic Book 1-4399-0588-6 $26.95 <FONT COLOR=#990033>Available</FONT> <BR> 248 pp 5.5x8.5 2 halftones </P><BLOCKQUOTE><I>"</I>East is West and West Is East<I> provides an engaging and nuanced analysis of film and literature from the 1930s that staged racialized encounters between Asia and the U.S. through vexed and often ambivalent articulations of gender, sexuality, and nation. Kuo makes an important intervention in American historical studies of racial formations through her attention to how gender shapes and contests racialized boundaries as well as in her foregrounding of the centrality of race to the anxieties and desires that structure expressions of modernity."</I><br>&#151<b>Wendy Kozol</b>, Professor of Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College</I></BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Between 1919-1938, contact between Asia and America forced a reassessment of the normative boundaries of race, sex, gender, class, home, and nation. Karen Kuo's provocative <i>East Is West and West Is East</i> looks closely at these global shifts to modernity. <P>In her analysis of five forgotten texts—the 1930 film <i>East Is West</i>, Frank Capra's 1937 version of <i>Lost Horizon</i> and its 1973 remake, Younghill Kang's novel <i>East Goes West</i>, and Baroness Ishimoto's memoir/manifesto, <i>Facing Both Ways</i>—Kuo elucidates how "Asia" played a role in shaping American gender and racial identities and how Asian authors understood modern America and its social, political, and cultural influence on Asia. <P>Kuo asserts that while notions of white and Asian racial difference remain salient, sexual and gendered constructions of Asians and whites were at times about similarity and intersections as much as they were about establishing differences. <BR> <h2>Excerpt</h2><P>Excerpt available at <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress">www.temple.edu/tempress</a></p> <BR> <h2>Reviews</h2> <p><I>"Long overdue, </I>East is West and West Is East<I> arrests an important era of cultural production by, about, and in relation to Asian Americans in the early part of the twentieth century. Kuo argues for the importance of analyzing how Asia and America look at each other and in so doing, frame their own gendered and racial subjectivities and national identities by what the other is not. The argument is convincing and necessary; a timely work that helps us understand today's encounters between these subjects-both peoples and nations."</I> <br>&#151<b>Celine Parreñas Shimizu</b>, Associate Professor of Asian American, Feminist and Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara <BR> <h2>Contents</h2><P> <p>Acknowledgments <br>Introduction <br>1. How Yellow and White Women Are Sold: Controlling Chinese and White Female Sexuality and the Making of US Domesticity in <i>East Is West</i> <br>2. Masculine Racial Formations in Younghill Kang’s <i>East Goes West: The Making of an Oriental Yankee</i> <br>3. Utopias Lost and Found: <i>Lost Horizon</i> and the Revitalization of American Masculinity <br>4. Envisioning Feminism across the Pacific: Japanese and American Feminism and the Limits of Race in <i>Facing Two Ways</i> <br>Conclusion <br>Notes <br>Bibliography <br>Index</p> </P><BR> <H2>About the Author(s)</H2> <P><b>Karen Kuo</b> is an Assistant Professor of Asian Pacific American Studies in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University.</P> <BR><H2>Subject Categories</H2> <p><A HREF="/tempress/asian_amer.html" TARGET="_top">Asian American Studies</a> <BR><A HREF="/tempress/gender.html" TARGET="_top">Gender Studies</a> <BR><A HREF="/tempress/literature.html" TARGET="_top">Literature and Drama</a> </p> <BR><h2 class="inpageheading">In the series</H2> <P><I><a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/asam_history.html" onMouseOver="window.status='Click for other books in this series!'; return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''; return true;" target="_top">Asian American History and Culture</a></i>, edited by Sucheng Chan, David Palumbo-Liu, Michael Omi, K. Scott Wong, and Linda Trinh Võ. </p><p>The "standard" written histories of Asian immigrants to the United States have been imbued with Western cultural biases. As a critique and corrective to earlier work, <I>Asian American History and Culture</I>, edited by Sucheng Chan, David Palumbo-Liu, Michael Omi, K. Scott Wong, and Linda Trinh Võ, aims to develop a history of Asian Americans that is compatible with their own experience, that treats Asian Americans as agents of historical change and as creators of a new culture. In addition, this series intends to focus on the groups that are flourishing in the contemporary U.S.&#151Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese&#151about whom little has been written as well as to add to the substantial work done on the Chinese and Japanese in this country.</p> <p align="center"><a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/ChicagoBook.aspx?ISBN=9781439905869&&PRESS=temple" target="_top">Buy this book!</a> | <a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/Cart.aspx?PRESS=temple" target="_top">View Cart</a> | <a href="https://cdcshoppingcart.uchicago.edu/Cart/Cart.aspx?PRESS=temple" target="_top">Check Out</a></p><p><font face="Arial" size="1"><a href="copyright.html" onMouseOver="window.status='Web Copyright Policy';return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''" title="Web Copyright Policy">©</a> 2013 <a href="http://www.temple.edu" target="new" onMouseOver="window.status='Link to Temple University home page';return true;" onMouseOut="window.status=''" title="Link to Temple University home page">Temple University</a>. All Rights Reserved. http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2135_reg.html</font></p>