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A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific
Contributor(s): Hsu, Hua (Author)

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ISBN: 0674967909     ISBN-13: 9780674967908
Publisher: Harvard University Press
OUR PRICE: $39.90  

Binding Type: Hardcover
Published: June 2016
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | American - Asian American
- History | United States - 20th Century
- History | Asia - China
Dewey: 951.05
LCCN: 2015032635
Physical Information: 1" H x 6.4" W x 9.3" L (1.10 lbs) 288 pages
Themes:
- Ethnic Orientation - Asian
- Chronological Period - 20th Century
Features: Bibliography, Index, Price on Product
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

Who gets to speak for China? During the interwar years, when American condescension toward "barbarous" China yielded to a fascination with all things Chinese, a circle of writers sparked an unprecedented public conversation about American-Chinese relations. Hua Hsu tells the story of how they became ensnared in bitter rivalries over which one could claim the title of America's leading China expert.

The rapturous reception that greeted The Good Earth--Pearl Buck's novel about a Chinese peasant family--spawned a literary market for sympathetic writings about China. Stories of enterprising Americans making their way in a land with "four hundred million customers," as Carl Crow said, found an eager audience as well. But on the margins--in Chinatowns, on Ellis Island, and inside FBI surveillance memos--a different conversation about the possibilities of a shared future was taking place.

A Floating Chinaman takes its title from a lost manuscript by H. T. Tsiang, an eccentric Chinese immigrant writer who self-published a series of visionary novels during this time. Tsiang discovered the American literary market to be far less accommodating to his more skeptical view of U.S.-China relations. His "floating Chinaman," unmoored and in-between, imagines a critical vantage point from which to understand the new ideas of China circulating between the world wars--and today, as well.


Contributor Bio(s): Hsu, Hua: - Hua Hsu is Associate Professor in the English Department at Vassar College.
 
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