Race and the Avant-Garde

Timothy Yu is Associate Professor of English and Asian American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Timothy Yu expands and further delineates the complicated relationship between ethnic minorities and self-proclaimed avant-grade communities."—J. Michael Martinez and Jordan Windholz, Puerto del Sol "Yu's Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian American Poetry since 1965 is ... provocative text that scholars of contemporary poetry and Asian American literature will be citing, discussing, and arguing over for many years to come."—Kimberly Lamm, Contemporary Literature. "Though this book at first appears narrowly focused, it manages to illuminate large areas of contemporary American poetry. The book is perhaps most compelling when it links poetry to late-20th-century social and political developments, for instance, the volatile situation during the late 1960s when the New Left fragmented into the competing, identity-conscious factions of the 1970s."—CHOICE "With Race and the Avant-Garde, Timothy Yu goes an extraordinarily long way toward overcoming the historical divorce between the "aesthetic" and the "ethnic." And excitingly, for teachers and students of Asian American literature, he has made Asian American poetry a central part of the case. Treating the rise of Asian American poetry and Language poetry in light of each other, Yu illustrates the indelible presence of race in experimental writing and the constitutive role of form in ethnic writing."—Colleen Lye, Author of America's Asia: Racial Form and American Literature, 1893-1945 "Race and the Avant-Garde marks a major turning point in genre and culture studies: it treats what is known as Asian American poetry not as a separate entity, but as a community in constant dialogue with that other community known as the avant-garde. In the latter part of the 20th century, Yu argues, the social groupings of American poetry come to cross-fertilize one another in intriguing ways, so that a 'minority' poetry like Asian American can best be understood as itself an avant-garde. Yu's sociology is both sophisticated and revelatory. Allen Ginsberg, Ron Silliman, John Yau, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: these poets will never look the same after reading Yu's outstanding book."—Marjorie Perloff,Author of Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media and Differentials "Explores how conflicts, anxieties, and confusions fuse with aesthetics, ideologies, and social formations in the unsettling project of a syncretic Asian American poetics. In order to fully engage such poetics, Yu looks at roots but also rootlessness, lineages as well as misalignments. Yu takes risks; the welcome result is a provocatively informative excursion into the productive synergy of race and aesthetic innovation."—Charles Bernstein

• Contents Acknowledgmentsxxx Introduction: Toward a Sociology of the Contemporary Avant-Garde1 1.Auto Poesy: Allen Ginsberg and the Politics of Poetry000 2.Ron Silliman and the Ethnicization of the Avant-Garde000 3.Inventing a Culture: Asian American Poetry in the 1970s000 4.Audience Distant Relative: Reading Theresa Hak Kyung Cha000 5.Mr. Moto's Monologue: John Yau and Experimental Asian American Writing000 Conclusion000 Notes000 Bibliography000 Index000