New Book

Begin Here: Reading Asian North American
Autobiographies of Childhood, by Rocio G. Davis.
Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007.
ISBN: 978-0824830922. 256 pp.

This new work by widens the critical focus of Asian North American literary studies by proposing an integrated thematic and narratological approach to the practice of autobiography. In analyzing how Asian North American writers challenge the construction and performance of national experiences by rewriting the inherited scripts of childhood, Davis highlights the ways in which these writers deploy their childhood narratives to represent individual processes of self-identification, and to negotiate cultural and national affiliations. Davis examines the artistic projects of some fifty AsianNorth American writers, providing a comprehensiveoverview of autobiographies of childhood published over the last century, while also attending to new ways of writing, including graphic novels, diaries, and mixed genre works. By reading the texts as generic engagements with North American life writing, Davisreveals their performative potential within the wider project of creating a community of readers that will produce and preserve cultural memory.

Further information about the book is available from
its publisher, the University of Hawai'i Press, at www.uhpress.hawaii.edu