The Asian Pacific American Heritage

Meeting the challenge of teaching multiculturalismStudents-and their teachers-encountering literature and arts from unfamiliar cultures will welcome the special help this book provides. Instructors who are unfamiliar with Asian Pacific cultures are now being asked to explain a reference to the Year of the Rat, Obon Season, or to interpret a haiku. When Amy Tan refers to the Moon Lady or the Kitchen God, what does she mean? Is Confucianism actually a religion? This book answers these and many other questions, for students, teachers, and the librarians to whom they turn for help.Provides sound information on in-demand topicsThe Companion presents lengthy articles-written specifically for this book-on the topics that unlock the work of a number of contemporary Asian Pacific American writers and artists, for example: Asian naming systems, the "model minority" discourse, Chinese diaspora, Filipino American values, the Confucian family and its tensions, Japanese internment, Mao's Great Cultural Revolution, the Korean alphabet, food and ethnic identity, religious traditions, Fengshui and Chinese medicine, Filipino folk religion, Hmong needlework, and reading Asian characters in English, just to name a few.Covers major contemporary writersThe articles are coupled with in-depth studies of the authors most likely to be part of the multicultural curriculum during the next decade, among them Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, Amy Tan, Younghill Kang, Carlos Bulosan, Jessica Hagedorn, Lawson Fusao Inada, Garret Hongo, David Henry Hwang, Kim Ronyoung, and Cathy Song.Expert contributorsThis volume was created under the supervision of distinguished Advisory Editors from the Asian Pacific American community. The contributors, a Who's Who of Asian Pacific American humanistic scholarship, are frequently