Both of these novels are bereft of Asian or Asian American protagonists and narrated from the standpoint of white American characters, and yet they cannot not be read in light of each author's critical and market identities as successful Asian American writers whose previous novels have been installed in the Asian American literary canon. The exclusion of ethnic and racial content in Chiang's work thus raises a rather different set of questions than those posed by novels like Chang-rae Lee's Aloft (2004) and Susan Choi's My Education (2013). This qualifies him as one of the few writers whose work falls neatly into Yoonmee Chang's definition of 'postracial' Asian American fiction as 'literature written by Asian American writers that does not contain Asian American characters or address Asian American experiences.' 3įrom the standpoint of a normative Asian American framework that interpellates writers via their biological and/or filiative backgrounds and literary texts via their explicit engagement with Asian and/or Asian American content, Chiang's fiction is Asian American only insofar as Chiang himself is biologically Asian. With only minor exceptions, Chiang's work passes over in silence Asian and Asian American content alike. 2 In light of the enormous cultural capital that he has accrued, it is no wonder that teachers of Asian American literature have been so eager to include Chiang in their studies and syllabi.īut the categorization of Chiang's fiction as Asian American raises a number of difficult questions. Along the way, Chiang has been awarded three of science fiction's most prestigious prizes -the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus -four times each. As a member of a genre community whose most successful writers are maniacally prolific, Chiang has published a mere thirteen works, all short fiction, most of which are included in his 2002 collection Stories of Your Life and Others. One of the most notable features of Chiang's career is the extremely high award-to-publication ratio he has achieved. Beginning 1 with the publication of his first story, 'Tower of Babylon,' in 1990, the American science fiction (SF) writer Ted Chiang has produced one of the most impressive bodies of work of any SF writer of his generation.

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