UC Irvine

What does Asian American mental unwellness look like? How can the humanities bridge the gaps in modern medicine and psychiatry? This thesis will explore these questions and more through literary analysis of suicide and suicidality in young adult novels, fiction, and memoir with Joanna Ho’s The Silence that Binds Us (2022), Emily X.R. Pan’s The Astonishing Color of After (2018), Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone (1993), and Stephanie Foo’s What My Bones Know (2022). Suicide feels like the end, and literally, it is: it is the end of life. On the other hand it is also a launching point to a deeper understanding of Asian American mental unwellness and the conditions within the Asian American family that produce this unwellness.