Globalization and "Asian Values": Teaching and Theorizing Asian American Literature

This essay investigates the question of "Asian values" posed by students in Asian American literature classes. In interrogating "Asian values" in both the Asian and American contexts, it argues that they reflect the impact of American capitalism upon Asian America and, as critic Nguyen suggests, the interests of Asian Americans in participating in American capitalism. This understanding of "Asian values" enables us to have a glimpse of the changing reality of Asian America and the heterogeneity and multiplicity of Asian American cultural production. This situating of "Asian values" also convinces students that "Asian values" are not politically neutral but culturally loaded in the interests of the nation-state, dominant culture, and individuals. This examination of "Asian values" finally leads us to reconsider what critic Palumbo-Liu calls "progressive humanism" and understand racial and cultural differences in non-essentialist and historical materialist terms.