| My dissertation project interrogates how Asian American authors since 1945 have deployed the stereotype of inscrutability---that is, the inscrutability of the minds of Asian and Asian Americans---in order to reframe/reexamine/debunk the stereotype in various ways. In my examinations of Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life, Monique Truong's The Book of Salt, Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings, Hisaye Yamamoto's "Seventeen Syllables" and "Wilshire Bus" and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, I investigate what narrative theorists have regarded as one of the most extraordinary aspects of fiction: its ability to give (or else deny) readers a remarkably detailed knowledge of the inner lives of their characters. In addition, I turn to the tools offered by rhetorical narratology as well as research in the cognitive and neurosciences. My dissertation ultimately reveals the link between narrative form and larger cultural issues associated with the representation of Asian American minds, and how a nuanced investigation of narrative form can yield insights into the sociocultural embeddedness of Asian American literature under my case studies---insights that would not be available if such formal questions were by passed. The various ways in which inscrutability is formed and operated in different texts for different purposes indicate that the Asian American inscrutability in fact can be used for author's advantage as a critical and creative literary tool, challenging and complicating that exact stereotype. |
