Mai Wang
Assistant Professor, University of Texas Dallas
Actions
Mai Wang is an assistant professor of literature at University of Texas Dallas. She received her PhD in English from Stanford University.
Melville vs. Whitman in Maxine Hong Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey
I discuss the implications of Maxine Hong Kingston's references to Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” and Walt Whitman’s poetry, including Leaves of Grass, in her novel Tripmaster Monkey. Published in 1989 and set in the 1960s, Tripmaster Monkey reflects a historical moment in which an ascendant ethnic studies coalition was bound together by calls to diversify college curricula and challenge the established Western canon while protesting the Vietnam War. Kingston allegorizes the central preoccupations of this activist movement—as well as its internal contradictions—by staging a dueling dynamic between the model of resistance offered by Melville’s Bartleby and the vision of reconciliation advanced by Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Early on in the novel, Kingston’s protagonist Wittman Ah Sing is stylized as Bartleby’s descendent: both figures reject capitalism by refusing to become productive workers. Bartleby’s insistence on willful non-participation finds a parallel in Ah Sing’s radical refusal to be an employee for the corporations that profit from both the weaponry produced for the Vietnam War and the mass consumer goods sold to average Americans. As the novel progresses, Ah Sing pivots away from Bartleby and follows Whitman’s example by positioning himself as a playwright of the people. Ah Sing’s metaphorical resemblance to Whitman reflects his desire to embody a conciliatory consciousness that accommodates a vision of American democracy governed by a rainbow coalition of the likeminded. Making art is framed as the only kind of labor worth pursuing. Kingston partially resolves the tension between Melville and Whitman by suggesting that both writers offer Ah Sing methods of evasion in a capitalist economy and affirm his commitment to pacifism.
Seeking Utopia with Younghill Kang and Nathaniel Hawthorne
My paper intervenes in the ongoing critical debate surrounding the Korean American writer Younghill Kang. Diverging from other critics who have explored Kang's work in the context of Korean nationalism and Japanese imperialism, I argue that Kang rewrites Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance in his 1937 autobiographical novel East Goes West. Hawthorne’s novel exemplifies the contradictions of the American romance by staging the growth of a utopian community bound together by a mutual commitment to creating a more egalitarian world before the resurgence of individual affections threatens to nullify the enactment of lasting reform, even on the miniaturized scale of a single, self-selecting group. Kang rewrites the literary form he adapts from Hawthorne in order to narrate an Asian American realist romance that critiques the racist logic of American anti-miscegenation laws while pointing to an emerging alliance between Korean immigrants and their white allies, yet--like Hawthorne--Kang ultimately defaults to a mode of individual self-determination that remains ambivalent towards the viability of efforts to shift race relations beyond one’s immediate circle.
AAAS Annual Conference 2023 Sessionize Event
Mai Wang
Assistant Professor, University of Texas Dallas
Actions
Please note that Sessionize is not responsible for the accuracy or validity of the data provided by speakers. If you suspect this profile to be fake or spam, please let us know.
Jump to top