Description
- Abstract:
- Through an analysis of works by Wendy Law-Yone, Charmaine Craig, Maw Shein Win, and Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint, this dissertation deconstructs Burmese American literature as a formation that has become more distinct in the past thirty years—particularly during the late 2010s, wherein there was a significant “boom” in North American literary works by writers belonging to, or descended from, the diaspora of Burma/Myanmar; such growth and readerly interest has occurred in tandem with the U.S.’s increasing awareness of various political and humanitarian crises taking place in Burma/Myanmar. The deconstruction of Burmese American literature requires the simultaneous deconstruction of “Burmese” and “Burmese American” as ethnic categories deployed by governmental and academic entities, necessitating a scrutiny of how ethnicity, race, and nationality—as institutionally defined and systemized in Burma/Myanmar—translate, mistranslate, and become redefined under U.S. power structures. Situating the historical complexities of ethnic identity specific to the diaspora of Burma/Myanmar within larger Asian American literary debates on identity categories and politics, representation, and aesthetics, this dissertation theorizes how Burmese American literature confronts an obsession with ethnicity and the stabilization of “authentic” Burmese-ness. This obsession is conditioned by both the ethno-nationalism of the Burmese/Myanmar military regime and U.S. multicultural nationalism, which is sustained by the liberal multiculturalism of the American university. “The Slash Between” argues that Burmese American literary works express their confrontation through scenes of the constricted, afflicted, and lacerated, but also transformative, body—at once bringing into relief the pressures of the body’s representation and the text’s representation, thereby elucidating a slippage between authenticity and authoritarianism. Burmese American literature challenges the corporeal terms of identity dictated by nationalist structures belonging to both Burma/Myanmar and the U.S., terms which are married when foregrounding “underrepresented” Burmese American literature in the Asian American canon. In response to the intersecting gazes seeking to authenticate Burmese-ness by reading texts as bodies, and bodies as texts, for the purpose of apprehending a pre-existing “truth” of ethnic identity, Burmese American literature inauthenticates itself. Simultaneous with its own inauthentication, Burmese American literature inauthenticates, or reads back, the authoritarian gaze.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2023
Citation
Dun, Ashley Aye Aye,
"The Slash Between: In/authenticating Burmese American Literature"
(2023).
English Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:v4k4vbc4/
