Revisiting Asian American Poetics: A Review of Heterogeneity and a Case of Russell Leong

Abstract

The term Asian America was first coined in the late 1960s. Although initially closely associated with political subversiveness and establishing a collective pan-Asian ethnic identity, the name has been continuously reinventing itself to be more diverse and elastic with the changing relationship between the United States and Asian countries and the arrival of new groups of Asian immigrants. Along the way, heterogeneity has always been an undeniable mark on the rubric of Asian America. This article revisits the expanding literary field of Asian American poetry, articulating a heterogeneous and indeterminate poetics from the movement era to the new century of globalization. It takes several poems of Russell Leong as a case study and foregrounds, through the conception tool of cultural translation, his in-betweenness, and the mixture of ethnic experiences and transnational concerns.