• English & American cultural studies
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.53-92
• /
• 2018

This essay aims to examine chick lit written within the Asian American context. For the most part, the chick lit genre has been typically regarded as a site to study contemporary white women's experiences and to debate the genres' credentials as feminist literature. Though some may disagree, there is general consensus that chick lit has fallen out of vogue after reaching its peak in the first decade of the new millenium.; nevertheless, it is being revisited by readers and critics alike as it has recently re-emerged as a location upon which to examine how race and gender inform notions of national belonging and female subject formation in the twenty-first century. To this end, this essay reads Kim Wong Keltner's The Dim Sum of All Things (2004). Keltner's protagonist Lindsey Owyang is yet another twentysomething "chick" looking for love, self, independence, and success in the huge megalopolis of San Francisco. What sets Lindsey apart from the chick prototype is that she is a third-generation ABC (American-born Chinese) and issues relevant to Asian America frequently make their way into Lindsey's narrative. Though it is generally considered as standing a "few notches above the standard chick-lit fare" (Stover n. pag), I would argue that meaningful reflections on many of the major pillars of Asian American literature, history, and cultural politics are glossed over in favor of cursory musings about the daily vicissitudes of Lindsey's life. This essay thus takes to task Ferriss's claim that a "serious" consideration of chick lit "brings into focus many of the issues facing contemporary women and contemporary culture - issues of identity, of race and class, of femininity and feminism, of consumerism and self-image" (2). I contend that a close examination of Keltner's The Dim Sum of All Things discloses that the chick lit format undermines a "serious consideration" of Asian American issues by presenting in particular a highly problematic representation of race and of Asian American femininity.

• The Southeast Asian review
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.171-199
• /
• 2012

Saman, a novel written by Ayu Utami, has been recognized as the symbol of the politico-social changes, which began to occur since the collapse of Suharto' New Order regime in 1998. In the novel, Ayu Utami showed the spirits of resistance against various absurd socio-political circumstances during the New Order era such as pressure on discussion, abuse of power, politics-business collusion, patriarchism, and suppression of gender. In representing those spirits, Ayu Utami used unconventional structure-making, fresh feedback and multilayered descriptions of the figures, which brought her a fame as the pioneer of the Fragrant Literature (Angkatan Wangi or chick-lit). Ayu Utami particularly criticized that, under the name of sustaining the national integrity and identity, the New Order regime enhanced patriarchal system, which consequently infringed gender equality and women's rights to self-determination. In addition, Ayu Utami argued that the abuse of power and politics-business collusion, which were prevalent during the New Order period, destroyed lives of the masses and the Indonesian society.