Reimagining the Madame Butterfly Narrative Asian American Literary Critique

Introduction: Reading Butterfly in Our Time; The Urgency of Anti-Orientalist Critique, Chapter 1: Butterfly's Metamorphosis and Orientalist Ambivalence, Part One: Mimicking the Colonial Butterfly: Trickster Negotiations in the Turn-of-the-Century Literary Marketplace, Chapter 2: "Another Madame Butterfly"? Onoto Watanna's Japanese Romances, Chapter 3: Reclaiming Butterfly's Child: Negotiations of Asian Mixed-Race Subjectivity in Onoto Watanna's and Sui Sin Far's Writings, Part Two: Refiguring Butterfly in the Postcolonial Era: Diasporic Ambivalence, Postcolonial Feminist Consciousness, Gender and Geopolitics Reenvisioned, Chapter 4: Anti-Orientalist Critique and "the Longing for Love": Negotiations of Diasporic Chinese Female Subjectivity in Geling Yan's The Lost Daughter of Happiness, Chapter 5: A New Woman in the Fresh New Asian City": Reimagining Chinese Malaysian Female Subjectivity in Shirley Geok-lin Lim's Joss and Gold, Chapter 6: To Tell "the True Butterfly Story": David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly Broadway Revival, Conclusion: Engage with the Past, Meet the Moment, References, Index.

Biography

Huining Ouyang is a Professor of English at Edgewood University, Madison, Wisconsin. She received her BA from Nanjing University, MA from Brigham Young University, and Ph.D. from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. Dr. Ouyang specializes in Asian American studies and literature, ethnic American literature, (im)migration and diaspora, and de/colonization.

“How do Asian American creatives counter the fetishization and hypersexualization of Asian women? Huining Ouyang’s engaging Reimagining the Madame Butterfly Narrative assembles a fascinating literary archive that reveals both Asian American investment in and ambivalence towards anti-Orientalist critique. A must for readers interested in the politics and complexities of interracial desire.”   

Leslie Bow, Sally Mead Hands-Bascom Professor and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor, English and Asian American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

 

“Huining Ouyang’s Reimagining the Madame Butterfly Narrative incisively shows how revisions to the original Butterfly story negotiate empire, migration, gender, and mixed-race subjectivity. Essential reading for anyone who wants to grasp how literature not only reflects but actively reshapes U.S. racial power.”

Professor Martha J. Cutter, Departments of English and Africana Studies, University of Connecticut

 

“Huining Ouyang’s Reimagining the Madame Butterfly Narrative gifts us with a sophisticated study of Asian American literature’s ambivalent critique of the enduring Orientalist fantasy of White man/Asian woman romance. All serious students of Asian American literature must read this book for its breath of coverage and critical insights.”

Wenying Xu, Professor of English, Jacksonville University