Author: Rachel C. Lee Drawing on a wide array of literary, historical, and theoretical sources, Rachel Lee addresses current debates on the relationship among Asian American ethnic identity, national belonging, globalization, and gender. Lee argues that scholars have traditionally placed undue emphasis on ethnic-based political commitments--whether these are construed as national or global--in their readings of Asian American texts. This has constrained the intelligibility of stories that are focused less on ethnicity than on kinship, family dynamics, eroticism, and gender roles. In response, Lee makes a case for a reconceptualized Asian American criticism that centrally features gender and sexuality. Through a critical analysis of select literary texts--novels by Carlos Bulosan, Gish Jen, Jessica Hagedorn, and Karen Yamashita--Lee probes the specific ways in which some Asian American authors have steered around ethnic themes with alternative tales circulating around gender and sexual identity. Lee makes it clear that what has been missing from current debates has been an analysis of the complex ways in which gender mediates questions of both national belonging and international migration. From anti-miscegenation legislation in the early twentieth century to poststructuralist theories of language to Third World feminist theory to critical studies of global cultural and economic flows, The Americas of Asian American Literature takes up pressing cultural and literary questions and points to a new direction in literary criticism.

Author: James M. Rubenstein At the time this book was published, new towns were cropping up as a matter of public policy in advanced industrial countries, yet the United States abandoned this project and deemed new towns inappropriate and impractical for the American situation. The purpose of this book is to inform planners and policy makers around the world about French new towns. It analyzes what French new towns tried to accomplish; the administrative, financial, and political reforms needed to secure implementation of the program; and the achievements of the new towns. The author's evaluation of French new towns is undertaken with an eye to international applicability. Chapter 1 examines the reasons for adopting a policy of new towns in France. Chapter 2 concerns the administrative structure by which new towns are built in France. Chapter 3 concentrates on major economic associations with new towns. Chapter 4 discusses the role of the private sector in the development of new towns. Chapter 5 examines the major accomplishment of the French new towns: the achievement of socially balanced communities. In the United States, new towns have been proposed as a means for integrating low-income families into suburbs that are otherwise closed to them. The French experience demonstrates that socially heterogeneous new communities can be developed, even within the framework of a market system, if a sufficiently high priority is placed on the effort.