1st Edition

Japanese-American Literature through the Prism of Acculturation

294 Pages
by Routledge

294 Pages
by Routledge

294 Pages
by Routledge

The twentieth-century reality in the Unites States was harsh for Japanese immigrants who attempted to settle down and follow their dreams in the new land. Prejudice and discrimination against the newcomers, rife among Americans, were exacerbated by the ramifications of World War II events, including the Pearl Harbor attack, which irrevocably changed the pattern of immigrant lives. In the... Read more

Introduction

1. Maps of Meaning and Cultural Contextualisation: Cultural Studies from a Critical Perspective

2. Ethnic Negotiations: Japanese Americans within the Ethnic Paradigm

3. ‘The Others’ in the American Land: Japanese Immigrants and Their Descendants through the Lens of Postcolonial Studies

3.1. Japanese Americans and Hybrid Cultural Identities within a Liminal Space

4. Acculturation Theory and Its Premises

5. Evocation of the Past as a Mirror for the Present: Japanese-American Works of Literature and Their Authors

6. Age in Cultural Contexts: Issei versus Nisei Generation Gap and Family Life

7. Ethnic/Social Status Dichotomy: Physically Japanese, Culturally American

7.1. Language Use and Communication

7.2. Education

7.3. Occupation

8. Cultural Distance: Split Identities and Ethnic Schizophrenia. An Outward Culture Perspective

8.1. Festival Celebrations, Customs and Cuisine

8.2. Culture and Etiquette

8.3. Sartorial Code

8.4. Dance

9. Within and beyond Assimilation: Collectivistic versus Individualistic Cultural Value Orientations. An Inward Culture Perspective

10. Gender Paradox: Male Authority in a Matriarchal Society

Conclusion

Bibliography

Biography

Małgorzata Jarmołowicz-Dziekońska, PhD (Faculty of Philology, University of Białystok, Poland), dedicates her research work to the relationship of literature and culture by exploring their textual intersections and mapping their locus within the matrix of the contemporary literary criticism. Her major fields of academic interest comprise ecocriticism, postcolonial and cultural studies with a focus on ethnicity and identity formation in the context of immigrant narratives.