Publisher's Synopsis
Audrey Wu Clark showcases how the literary figure of the Asian American player unsettles the hegemony of white American masculinity through mimicry, even as that masculinity socially and politically alienates him. She examines gendered and racialized US militarism through works written during major postmodern American wars, investigating how books by John Okada, David Henry Hwang, Chang-rae Lee, Frances Khirallah Noble, and Viet Thanh Nguyen (re)fashion Asian American masculinity in ways that mimic masculinist American foreign policy and military strategies during corresponding wars. She unearths a dual picture of Asian American players: as traces of the anxiety of America's quest for empowerment and military and industrial dominance in the international arena and as those tarred as inferior and disloyal outsiders within this mirrored global dominance.
