Asian Diaspora and East-West Modernity by Sheng-mei Ma is a highly readable collection of essays that reflect on issues such as East-West relations, Orientalism, modernity, immigration, and the diaspora through close readings of mostly contemporary East Asian and Asian American literary and popular cultural productions. The term “East-West modernity” in the title should be appropriately understood as an analytical approach to modernity from the perspective of the “East-West power dynamic” (p. 3). Likewise, “Asian diaspora” refers more to diasporic perspectives than to actual diasporic communities in specific historical and sociological contexts. The essays cover an impressive array of cultural texts, ranging from Asian horror films to Asian American children's and young adult books, novels by Chang-rae Lee and Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese manga, and the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
This is not your typical study of Asian or Asian American literature. Ma's choice of subject, such as the cell phone and horror,...
