Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America - (Stanford Studies in Comparative Race and Ethnicity) by Long Le-Khac (Paperback)

About the Book

"Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America tells the story of the making of a shared Latinx and Asian America over the past fifty years. Historically this solidarity has been difficult to see because Asian and Latinx immigrants have often been described in opposing terms of desirability (model minority versus "illegal" immigrant). However, by looking at similarities in Latinx and Asian American literatures, Long Le-Khac reveals their entangled histories and the ways in which these groups have formed in relation to one another"--

Book Synopsis

Crossing distinct literatures, histories, and politics, Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America reveals the intertwined story of contemporary Asian Americans and Latinxs through a shared literary aesthetic. Their transfictional literature creates expansive imagined worlds in which distinct stories coexist, offering artistic shape to their linked political and economic struggles. Long Le-Khac explores the work of writers such as Sandra Cisneros, Karen Tei Yamashita, Junot Díaz, and Aimee Phan. He shows how their fictions capture the uneven economic opportunities of the post-civil rights era, the Cold War as it exploded across Asia and Latin America, and the Asian and Latin American labor flows powering global capitalism today.

Read together, Asian American and Latinx literatures convey astonishing diversity and untapped possibilities for coalition within the United States' fastest-growing immigrant and minority communities; to understand the changing shape of these communities we must see how they have formed in relation to each other. As the U.S. population approaches a minority-majority threshold, we urgently need methods that can look across the divisions and unequal positions of the racial system. Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America leads the way with a vision for the future built on panethnic and cross-racial solidarity.

Review Quotes

"Long Le-Khac elaborates a concept of transfictional literature that provides an important means of understanding the formation of Asian and Latinx communities in relation to one another, at mid-century and within our contemporary moment. This unique book is a wonderful contribution that will enrich the growing scholarship on comparative racialization."--Lisa Lowe "Yale University"

"Long Le-Khac expertly demonstrates how aesthetic form can reveal solidarities within and across ethnic and racial differences. Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America reveals this capacity in transfiction, finding community within shared historical ground and political aspirations."--Crystal Parikh "New York University"

"Long Le-Khac offers a completely new way of understanding the form and substance of the stories of our time. Giving Form to an Asian and Latinx America fundamentally rearranges the way that scholars of American literature in general will view the work of a new generation of U.S. ethnic writers."--Ramón Saldivar "Stanford University"

About the Author

Long Le-Khac is Assistant Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago.