This essay complicates the notion of commonality on which definitions of community are based, and... more This essay complicates the notion of commonality on which definitions of community are based, and focuses on the dissonant, disparate, and discontinuous elements at the heart of communities in settings of migration. Taking as a starting point the definition of uncommon community given by the American Portuguese Studies Association in the context of its 2016 conference, this essay explores the literary representation of the disconnected Portuguese American community as exemplified in Brian Sousa’s Almost Gone (2013). This novel-in-stories approaches Portuguese migration from the multiple and conflicting viewpoints of three generations of Portuguese American immigrants. Through the narration of fragmented yet intertwined stories, Sousa portrays the personal and familial struggles faced by Portuguese immigrants in their search of self, and comments more generally on the complexity of the immigrant experience as the protagonists’ individual and collective sense of alienation paradoxical...
v Introduction—Ambivalent Orientalism: Footbinding in Chinese America 1 PART I: FOOTBINDING IN TH... more v Introduction—Ambivalent Orientalism: Footbinding in Chinese America 1 PART I: FOOTBINDING IN THE U.S. ARCHIVES 1. Constructing China, Constructing America: Footbinding in the 55 Nineteenth-Century U.S. Imagination 2. Constructing Chinese America: Between Selfand De-Orientalization 91 PART II: SUBVERTING BINARIES: WRITING AND STAGING FOOTBINDING AT CULTURAL, GENERIC AND GENDER CROSSROADS 3. Voices from Past and Present: Footbound Women’s Conflicting 129 Textual and Oral Histories 4. Negotiating the Double Binds in The Woman Warrior and Of Flesh and Spirit 175 5. Exploring Footbinding History in Films and Performances: A Male 209 Feminist Perspective 6. Unsettling Unbinding’s Liberatory Power: Maxine Hong Kingston’s 239 and Genny Lim’s Immigration Narratives 7. Re-Orienting Footbinding: Writing the Communist Foot in Waiting and Becoming Madame Mao 277 Epilogue: Toward De-Orientalization 311
This essay complicates the notion of commonality on which definitions of community are based, and... more This essay complicates the notion of commonality on which definitions of community are based, and focuses on the dissonant, disparate, and discontinuous elements at the heart of communities in settings of migration. Taking as a starting point the definition of uncommon community given by the American Portuguese Studies Association in the context of its 2016 conference, this essay explores the literary representation of the disconnected Portuguese American community as exemplified in Brian Sousa’s Almost Gone (2013). This novel-in-stories approaches Portuguese migration from the multiple and conflicting viewpoints of three generations of Portuguese American immigrants. Through the narration of fragmented yet intertwined stories, Sousa portrays the personal and familial struggles faced by Portuguese immigrants in their search of self, and comments more generally on the complexity of the immigrant experience as the protagonists’ individual and collective sense of alienation paradoxical...
v Introduction—Ambivalent Orientalism: Footbinding in Chinese America 1 PART I: FOOTBINDING IN TH... more v Introduction—Ambivalent Orientalism: Footbinding in Chinese America 1 PART I: FOOTBINDING IN THE U.S. ARCHIVES 1. Constructing China, Constructing America: Footbinding in the 55 Nineteenth-Century U.S. Imagination 2. Constructing Chinese America: Between Selfand De-Orientalization 91 PART II: SUBVERTING BINARIES: WRITING AND STAGING FOOTBINDING AT CULTURAL, GENERIC AND GENDER CROSSROADS 3. Voices from Past and Present: Footbound Women’s Conflicting 129 Textual and Oral Histories 4. Negotiating the Double Binds in The Woman Warrior and Of Flesh and Spirit 175 5. Exploring Footbinding History in Films and Performances: A Male 209 Feminist Perspective 6. Unsettling Unbinding’s Liberatory Power: Maxine Hong Kingston’s 239 and Genny Lim’s Immigration Narratives 7. Re-Orienting Footbinding: Writing the Communist Foot in Waiting and Becoming Madame Mao 277 Epilogue: Toward De-Orientalization 311
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