The Korean American Cowboy and the Fallacy of Regenerative Violence in Leonard Chang's <i>the Fruit 'N Food</i>

Abstract

This essay examines the incompatibility between violence deployed by Asian American male subjects and their pursuit of masculinity in Leonard Chang’s novel, The Fruit ’N Food. According to Richard Slotkin, American history has evidenced that violence affords hegemonic men a venue by which to validate their masculinity and gain access to its cachet. Asian American men’s appropriation of violence, however, effects the converse; even as they endeavor to tap into the regenerative quality of violence, they discover that their violence is delegitimized by their race and hence loses the capacity to restore their masculinity divested by the dominant discourse.