Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The State of Race: Asian/American Fiction after World War II

The State of Race: Asian/American Fiction after World War II

Ang, Sze Wei

Hardcover

Series: Suny Multiethnic Literatures

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 1438475012
ISBN13: 9781438475011
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: Jul 1 2019
Pages: 200
Weight: 0.90
Height: 0.70 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.10
Language: English

An innovative comparative study of the role of racial stereotypes in expressing state power under globalization.

Contemporary ideas about race are often assumed to be products of specific locales and histories, yet we find versions of the same ideas about race across countries and cultures. How can we account for this paradox? In The State of Race, Sze Wei Ang argues that globalization has led to new ways of using racial stereotypes as shorthand for complex social relations in disparate national contexts. Literature then provides a key to understanding these labels and the role that race has played in shoring up state power since World War II. Ang contends that in an era marked by global economic dependence, the nation-state has only become more rather than less central to organizing social life via tropes of race that cast human and cultural differences in morally charged terms. Focusing on a series of Asian American and Malaysian texts, Ang tracks the significance of two figures in particular-the model minority and the communist spy. Appearing in novels, politics, and popular culture, these stereotypes anchor powerful narratives about race, global capital, and state sovereignty. In exploring the United States and Malaysia, two countries that seem to not have much in common, Ang reveals how they share very similar ways of conceptualizing race and sheds light on an emerging global story of value.

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