As we see from the two most recent book deals for "debut fiction" -- i.e. someone's first novel or story collection -- adolescents and exotic young Asian women continue to fascinate. I don't have any trouble understanding the latter -- just check the back pages of your local free weekly newspaper and see how many of the ads for escorts are for Asians -- but I really do wonder who's reading all these coming-of-age books.
2 comments:
Huh, maybe other asian women are interested in asian women's coming of age? Or maybe women in general?
What you said pisses me off on so many levels I don't even know where to start!
I guess we better go back to publishing only white guys and books about them since they are the only people who buy books? Or what?
Maybe what you are trying to say is that young asian women get commodified/sexualized. But, undermining the actual acheivement of actual women, who, say, write a book and get it published, by invoking that stereotype, is a huge part of racism and sexism and tokenization and, whatever, everything that annoys me... You just basically said that whatever young asian women write and get published, it's because they are fetishized by ... whoever fetishizes them... thus undermining whatever they actually DO... and framing women writers, and here, specifically young asian ones, in a position where they can never genuinely succeed. Really, how could you! It's also like you just whined that white guys never get published anymore because they're white guys and they wish they were hot chicks instead! OMG whatever!
Usually you're so fabulous but I am so pissed at you right this moment!
Snarking about fetishization of youth culture I can sort of see. Snarking about race and gender, like that, I just can't.
OK, but she's not an Asian woman -- maybe I should have made that clear. Take a look at her website. She is an American woman who married a Japanese guy.
Of course people have a right to write about their own experience as well as the experience of others. I certainly have done both. It just seems like there's a lot of focus on one subject now, and I don't understand why. To the extent this is a trend, I do think there is some commodification going on.
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