This thesis analyzes groundbreaking experimental texts by Asian American writers that employ genre-bending formal innovations to resist the uneasy containment of social hierarchies and aesthetic categories. After a brief discussion of Monica Youn’s 2019 poem, “Study of Two Figures (Pasiphaë/Sado),” I trace such experimentation back to the late twentieth century, focusing on two other texts that explore similar strategies of literary experimentation and that present themselves as novels but, as Youn does with poetry, resist that classification at the same time. The experimental expansions of form in both Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee (1982) and Pamela Lu’s Pamela: A Novel (1998) defy categorization and the containments of genre. Further, the formal resistances of both texts repudiate social categorizations on the basis of ethnic, racial, and gender containment. The hybrid forms of Dictee and Pamela: A Novel act as corollaries for resistance to the racial and gender markers constructed by society to contain Asian American identities.

Comanche Boys is a novel that was written and revised during Benjamin Honea’s time at the University of Kentucky. The novel focuses on Brandon, who lives in rural southwest Oklahoma, and how the arrival of two people in his life, one old and one new, changes his future irrevocably. Taking place at the intersections of modern American and Native American life, the narrative explores history, culture, mythology, faith, despair, racism, poverty, vengeance, and justice. The struggles of the past and present, the lost and reclaimed, propel and pervade the lives of the characters.

Texts such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Nella Larsen’s Quicksand each present a different understanding and perspective of relationships based on their time periods and social statures. The type of relationship Stowe focuses on in her novel is that of friendship. Friends, defined as people with whom have a bond of mutual affection, and friendships, the state of mutual trust and support (Merriam-Webster), anchor the relationships that Eva and Eliza create with members on the plantation. These female protagonists turn to friendship as a way to live each day more normally – that is, to somehow alleviate the brutal cruelty of living through slavery. Despite varying odds, trials, and tribulations, seeking friendships that had preservative and supportive qualities allowed the female protagonists in Stowe’s novel to survive their own lives. The friendships Eva and Eliza formed discredit what many paternalist pro-slavery authors used as evidence to justify the institution of slavery. In the paternalist proslavery mindset, slave-owner and slave friendships revealed the benefits of slavery – that the two groups would be happier together rather than apart. Stowe discredits this mentality by relating to her 19th century reader’s emotions, representative of the sentimental genre in which she writes. However, in writing about slavery from a white woman’s perspective, Stowe isn’t fully exempt from the paternalist genre. As I will examine later, many of her statements about slavery and the friendships she narrates embody implicitly racist stereotypes and caricatures that complicate the abolitionist approach to her novel. In this way, she falls under the category of paternalist abolitionism, rather than paternalist proslavery. Stowe also highlights the fleeting nature of these friendships. Many, if not all, of the friendships Eva and Eliza form are not able to last, which is one way Stowe argues against the institution of slavery. Following Stowe, my discussion of Jacobs will introduce a slave’s perspective to female relationships in slavery. The relationships in Jacobs’ narrative are centered on family, and the power of relying on one’s own blood or close-knit community to survive slavery. Writing also within the sentimental mode, Jacobs focuses on her reader’s emotions in order to propel her anti-slavery argument. The female relationships Jacobs details are grounded in literal and metaphorical motherhood. She highlights these relationships as an emotional and familial, particularly motherly, survival method. Jacobs’ text showcases the importance of family, rather the relationships or friendships formed with strangers– thereby differentiating her argument from Stowe’s. Nella Larsen’s Quicksand draws on the emotional and social difficulties one biracial woman faced in a world affected by the legacy of slavery and World War I. As a biracial woman, Helga develops relationships with men and women she hopes will support her progressive way of thinking and sense of selfhood. Helga’s relationships are more aptly defined as partnerships – given that “partners” may involve sexual, non-sexual, and business-like dynamics between two people. Helga must find authentic, or non-hypocritical, people to assist in her journey for selfhood and kin. But similarly to the relationships in Stowe and Jacobs, the friendships Helga creates often fail her. The question of why they fail in Quicksand connects directly to the question the novel itself is asking: is the search for selfhood more important than the search for kin? The argument all three works make with these failures represents a call to action – not just for the time period in which their novels were written, but also for future American communities. The continuing consequences of racial and gender discrimination exposed by Stowe, Jacobs, and Larsen show us that real social change must come from people – from the relationships we form.

Kentucky, following in the footsteps of her parent state, Virginia, has given to America some of her most distinguished statesmen. She gave to the Confederacy its only president, Jefferson Davis, and to the Federal Union its war president, Abraham Lincoln. Housed in a noble pile of imperishable granite, on its exact original site, near Hodgenville, the humble log cabin in which Lincoln was born is now preserved as a national shrine. At Fairview a towering obelisk marks the birthplace of Jefferson Davis. These two statesmen were born, one year between them, of the same pioneering stock. One moved north of the slavery line; the other went southward into the heart of the slave country. Thereafter their lives ran by contrasting, instead of by parallel, lines. But in temperament and in sentiment both remained forever Kentuckians at heart. [Cobb. Kentucky, p. 40] In the field of literature Kentucky has not been so outstanding, but far too little is known of the writers whom she has produced. In the field of descriptive narrative perhaps no more representative writer has sprung from Kentucky soil than the one chosen for this study. James Lane Allen has done for Kentucky, or rather a particular section of Kentucky, what Thomas Nelson Page has done for Virginia and George W. Cable for Louisiana. More than any other author he has made the Bluegrass region of Kentucky both known to his countrymen and Europeans. “Both in rendering incomparably the prodigal beauty of his homeland and in portraying the vanished types of antebellum days, Mr. Allen is a rare artist.” [International Encyclopedia]

In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick Captain Peleg declares, “Ahab has his humanities.” Although many facets of Ahab’s character have been explored, his humanities have not been discussed at length. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “humanities” as “human attributes; traits or touches of human nature or feeling; points that concern man, or appeal to the human sensibilities.” This definition is vague; the specific qualities which should be included must be enumerated, since the humanities of one culture may not be the same as those of another. Ahab has been associated with two cultures – The Western, Christian tradition and the Near Eastern, Zoroastrian tradition. Ahab has been a Quaker associated with Calvinists, groups which hold different views of human actions. Further, Ahab has been in an authoritative position for many years. Out of these five strands of his background, the old man’s humanities must be drawn. First, a workable definition of “humanities” can be developed through an exploration of positive attributes in Zoroastrianism and Christianity in general; qualities of particular merit in Quakerism and Calvinism can also be described. Of special interest is Father Mapple’s sermon listing a series of “woes” and “delights.” In addition, certain qualities necessary in a good leader must be examined. Second, to get some perspective on Ahab’s character on the final voyage, one must attempt to piece together the old man’s life prior to the final voyage to see what, if any, “humanities” were present. This discussion will offer some thoughts on the relations of Ahab’s name to his stance toward God, men and nature. Third, Ahab’s humanities during the final voyage may be seen in his relationships with three significant characters: Starbuck, Pip and Fedallah. In each discussion four points are noteworthy: (1) the similarities and differences in the individual’s and Ahab’s backgrounds, (2) the motivation for Ahab’s actions toward the individual, (3) the actions of Ahab, and (4) the results of the relationship upon Ahab and the other individual. Fourth, Ahab’s humanistic feelings are often expressed when he is alone. Nature acts upon the old man, and he responds. Thus the sea and sky offer him a chance to express some of his humane ideas. This study, then, attempts to answer the following questions: Did Ahab at any time possess attributes which might be termed “humanities?” Did Ahab’s humanities partly derive from specific strands of his background? Did Ahab retain all, some, or none of his humanities until his death?

A comparative analysis of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, with a focus on individual as well as collective memory work in historically marginalized indigenous and African-American communities, respectively. This represents a critical study of how the novels invoke progressive and redemptive models of remembering, as well as foreground the role of spiritual guides in the transformative process from trauma towards healing.

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Sexuality in the early novels of Robert Penn Warren is generally not appealing, intimate, or indicative of love between partners, in part due to the seeming coldness of the female characters and the near-asexuality of the males. However, when both social and personal interactions between the characters are analyzed semiotically according to the theories of Julia Kristeva, a pattern emerges which explains the harshness of the bond between men and women.

The use of myth in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God has been touched on by a few critics, but the wealth of Hurston's knowledge of different cultures offers readers a number of stories and tales from which to draw possible analogues to her characters. In fact, readers can trace Greek, Roman, Norse, Babylonian, Egyptian, African and African-American mythic elements in her character Tea Cake Woods. Hurston uses these analogues to enrich the characterization and to posit her theories of love and happiness in the modern age.

This thesis considers the use of Young Adult Chicana Literature in the classroom to help young Chicanas work through their process of finding their identities. It begins by making the case that Chicana identities are complex because of their intersectional borderland positioning between Mexican and U.S. American cultures, which makes the identity formation process more difficult for them than others. By relating these complex issues facing young Chicanas to literature that is more relevant to them and their struggles, it is argued that teachers can help ease some of the tensions that exist within their students and help them work more easily through the identity issues they may be facing. This text engages in an analysis of two pieces of Young Adult Chicana Literature, Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street and Isabel Quintero’s Gabi, A Girl in Pieces, through the critical lens of autohistoria-teoría to argue that because the forms of these novels follow this pattern of theorizing through experience and reflection, they can be of critical assistance in helping young Chicanas work through their own experiences and issues. Finally, this thesis moves into my own autohistoria-teoría in which I reflect on my own experiences with the identity formation process and how recognition of myself in literature played a critical role in my own process, and how the overwhelming lack of this type of literature stunted my identity formation process.