Rezension zu: Sylvia Junko Yanagisako's "Transforming the Past: Tradition an Kinship Among Japanese Americans"

Stephanie Wössner

nov 2009 · GRIN Verlag

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Literature Review from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: B, San Francisco State University (Ethnic Studies), course: AAS 833 Asian American Family and Identity, language: English, abstract: In her book Transforming the Past: Tradition and Kinship Among Japanese Americans, Sylvia Junko Yanagisako argues that Japanese American kinship is the outcome of a process of negotiation between Issei and Nisei, between the past and the present, between Japanese and American culture. The Nisei use the same words and concepts as their Issei parents to evaluate the real world, they attribute, however, a different meaning to these words and concepts. In order to make sense of their world, they interpret the mass culture they are exposed to on the basis of their own folk history. Like any other work, Transforming the Past has both strengths and weaknesses, some of them more important than others. In this essay, I want to point out those strengths and weaknesses that I believe to be most important. As far as the structure is concerned, Transforming the Past is a quite well organized book. It looks at the three aspects of marriage, filial relations, and siblinghood and kinship in a very organized way, namely by first describing the Issei views, followed by the opinion of the Nisei.

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