# Week 1

## Lecture 1 (9/30)

- Ralph Ellison: novel bound up with nationhood
  - What/who are we?
  - What has been the experience of this particular group?
  - How did it become this way?
  - What stops us from attaining the ideal?
- American writers + artists always return to question of our national
  collectivity -> successes / failures
- American flag is abstraction + symbol
- Same painting, over and over again, different meaning/symbol
- w/ rise of democracy in US, slavery happened in parallel -> cannot talk about
  one without the other
- Use example of Asian American literature as entryway toward understanding
  larger American / minority literature
- _Otherness_: radical difference -> Asian is always "foreigner", "strange",
  "grotesque"
  - Asians come to US for labor shortage (railroads, etc)
  - Perceived through 19th century and further as radically different
- Assimilation: American promise of leaving behind "tradition" -> "modern life"
  - Theoretical concept -> trickle into daily lives
- W.E.B. DuBois -> "the problem of the color life" + "double consciousness"
  - Most useful metaphor: double consciousness
- Double consciousness -> hybridity: rethinking from two different distinct
  selves -> combination / overlapping "hybrid consciousness"
- Does the arc of history bend toward progress?
- On style: how do stylistic decisions (by writers) shape their thematic
  arguments?
  - Leave things out, emphasize, etc
- On realism, modernism, postmodernism
- Next: read Erika Lee

## Section (10/04)

### Logistics

- 2 excused absences -> no questions asked

### Notes

- Minority-ness in 5 categories
  - Assimilation
  - Hybridity
  - Double consciousness
  - Invisibility
  - Otherness

#### Otherness

- What is us? -> group an individual identifies w/ and sense of belonging
- Other -> (perceived) different / "out group"
- Distinguishing "us" / "other" -> culture, language, behaviors, religious
  traits, citizenship, race, etc
- Social constructs -> (may) change over time
- Stereotypes, power, political policies, hegemony, etc...
- Anti-Asian laws and policies
  - 1875 Page Act
  - 1882 **Chinese Exclusion Act**
  - 1907 Expatriation Act
  - 1913 First Alien Land Law
  - 1922 Cable Act (reverses Expatriation Act except for women who marry "aliens ineligible for citizenship")
  - 1924 Immigration Act
- Keep in mind while reading Bulosan (191X, 1930-1956)
  - Attain citizenship for rights, representation, and influence
  - Accumulate wealth through real estate
  - Form _families_ and establish a lasting presence