Abstract
MANHOOD BESIEGED elaborates on the Chinese wen-wu ideal and tracks how wu waxes and wen wanes in the works of Gus Lee and David Wong Louie, respectively. Up against the “effeminate” stereotypes of Asian men, Lee’s “China boy” aspires to be a black youngster by learning how to box, thereby posing physical aggression (wu) as the only way for men of color to assimilate. Louie’s protagonists, for all their wen sophistication, are constantly beset by anxiety, insecurity and pangs of unrequited love; they try at times to “pass” as whites, but find themselves invariably falling short of the American matinée idol. The chapter concludes by ferreting out viable models such as Chinese men of letters and caring men(tors) of color.
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Cheung, KK. (2016). Manhood Besieged: Gus Lee and David Wong Louie. In: Chinese American Literature without Borders. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-44177-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-44177-5_3
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