Arguing that Yamashita's most important contribution is her incorporation of a North-South vector into the East-West conceptual paradigm, Ling highlights the novelist's re-prioritization, through such a geographical realignment, of socio-economic concerns for Asian American literary criticism. In assessing Yamashita's works as such, Ling designates her novelistic art as a form of new Asian American literary avant-garde that operates from the peripheries of received histories, aesthetics, and disciplines. Seeking not only to demonstrate the importance of Yamashita's transnational art, Ling sets new terms for ongoing dialogues in Asian American literary and cultural criticism. At the same time, he argues for the continuing relevance of Asian American literature as a self-reflexive and self-renewable critical practice.