Updated Reading List: East Asian Literature Through a Feminist Lens

Updated: East Asian Literature Through a Feminist Lens

(I) Secondary/ Theoretical Works:

  1. The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, edited by Thomas Rimer and Van C. Gessel, 2011.
  2. Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature, Edited by Rachael Hutchinson and Leith Morton, 2016
  3. The Woman’s Hand: Gender & Theory in Japanese Women’s Writing, by Paul Gordon Schalow, 1997.
  4. The Princess, the Witch, and the Fireside: Yanagi Miwa’s Uncanny Restaging of Fairy Tales, by Mayako Murai, 2013.
  5. “The Uncanny”, Sigmund Freud

 

(II) Academic Journals:

  1. The Journal of Japanese Studies
  2. AATJ Journal: Japanese Language and Literature

 

(III) Key Words:

  1. Gender
  2. Japanese/Literature
  3. Post-colonial
  4. Sexuality
  5. Psyche
  6. Grotesque

 

(IV) Primary Sources:

  1. The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa, 1990 & 1991
  2. The Gangster we Are All Looking For, Le Thi Diem Thuy, 2003
  3. Revenge, Yoko Ogawa, 1998
  4. The House Keeper and the Professor, Yoko Ogawa, 2003

 

(V) Updated Paragraph:

This updated version of my reading list has omitted some of the sources I previously had. I needed to narrow down my journals and some of my theoretical works, and I stuck with the most relevant ones that include information of Japanese literature and East Asian studies. Although most of my research is centered on Japan, I would also like to branch out to other countries in East Asia such as Vietnam. One of my primary sources, the Gangster We Are All Looking For is written by a Vietnamese female author through the eyes of a young Vietnamese girl who has recently immigrated to the United States. This book centers on her growing up as a young Vietnamese girl and what this means for her in her life as she grows into maturity. My other primary texts are all by the same author whom originally inspired me to pursue this topic, Yoko Ogawa. She is a Japanese writer who has an ability to capture the female protagonist and their desire for romance and the grotesque and uncanny qualities that go along with it. By using multiple books by the same author I hope to find many parallel themes that can help to develop my thesis of the female body and the perception of it through a grotesque lens.

One thought on “Updated Reading List: East Asian Literature Through a Feminist Lens”

  1. I think it’s great that you’ve found a Japanese writer whose work you are really interested in and has motivated your research process thus far. That’s definitely exciting and I’m sure there’s a lot to be done in terms of a comparative analysis of the same author’s works. I was really interested in your mention of bringing in a Vietnamese writer as I think this could also enable a comparative analysis across two different cultures that have important power dynamics between them–if that’s something that you would be interested in. From my previous work studying Southeast Asian literature with Professor Collins, I was able to learn a lot about Viet Nam and specifically, its relation as a Southeast Asian country to East Asian countries like Japan. There are important histories there that you could look at, and incorporate into your analysis of the texts if you were to choose to compare the two. Especially since you’ve mentioned postcolonial theory as one of your keywords, I might suggest Ania Loomba’s Colonialism/Postcolonialism (Routledge, 3rd ed. 2015) for some theoretical and historical contexts.

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