英文摘要 |
Anzia Yezierska’s canonical value resides in her writing that conjoins the literary with particular ethnic language and culture. As Yezierska is placed within the category of “ethnicity,” this category has become so prevalent that it seldom comes into question. In this paper, I examine the sociohistorical circumstances of literary production of ethnic texts and also the ideological operation and its consequence of labeling Yezierska as an ethnic writer in the 1920s. Although marketing Yezierska based on her Jewish immigrant background in the 1920s was an effective strategy for self-commodification and promotion, the determined and arbitrary conditions of validating Yezierska as a “colored” artist ironically enabled her works to achieve public acknowledgment based not upon the sophistication of her creative work or her aspirations in the creative life. Instead, she was promoted on the basis of her appeal to an American reading public hungry for a new source of vitality and sensuality. Once the novelty had worn off, she fell prey to this tally-sheet approach and simply could not meet white aesthetic standards in the next decades. The ethnic labeling that helps enforce the segregation of ethnic writers from major American writers needs to be interrogated and problematized. In continuing to designate the salience of ethnicity to certain writers and to reinforce the literary difference between racial minorities and white Americans, I would argue, we are still trapped in a Western dualistic frame within which the marketing of ethnic writers continue to be practiced within the putatively marginal modes of representation and consumption. |