| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 175 words from this article are provided below; about 358 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Compositional Subjects: Enfiguring Asian/ American Women. By Laura Hyun Yi Kang. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. x, 354 pp. Cloth, $59.95, ISBN 0-8223-2883-6. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8223-2898-4.)

In her examination of how identity and disciplinarity have contributed to the production of "Asian women" and "Asian American women," Laura Hyun Yi Kang reviews how Asian American women have figured in literary criticism, film criticism, history, and anthropology. Noting that within the authoritative, established disciplines, Asian American women are minor objects of study, she heeds Arjun Appadurai's call to destabilize the authority of the major over the minor. In the chapter on literary criticism, Kang uses the commentaries on Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior (1976) to chart the genealogy of Asian American women as writing subjects. Her foray into film studies reviews three films of the 1990s and shows how they portray the Asian American woman as a desiring body. The anthropological chapter is an analysis of Asian American women as transnational labor, whether in factory assembly lines or in sex tourism.

. . .

There are about 358 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.