UCLA

The chapter examines the tension between white feminism and ethnic feminism as well as between men and women in Asian American literary circles. Specifically it addresses Frank Chin’s attack on Maxine Hong Kingston over her depiction of Chinese sexism in The Woman Warrior and my own position as a literary critic torn between cultural nationalism and feminism. Using the opening of Kingston’s “China Men” as my point of departure, I urge Asian American men who feel “emasculated” by white culture to empathize with Asian women instead of resenting their feminist empowerment or reasserting machismo.