猶太裔美籍作家安吉亞•葉莎斯嘉的崛起：美國1920 年代的行銷與閱讀

Professing Anzia Yezierska: Marketing and Reading Yezierska in the 1920s

葉莎斯嘉作品的「正典價值」存在於作者猶太裔之身分及其作品中獨特的族群語言與文化的呈現，長期以來葉莎斯嘉已被視為猶太裔美籍作家的代表人物之一，這樣的歸類似乎已是約定成俗。本文旨在審視美國1920 年代對於少數民族文學出版的操作手法，探究將葉莎斯嘉貼上所謂民族作家標籤後所導致的後果。雖然行銷作者猶太裔身分成功的讓葉莎斯嘉成為眾所皆知的人物，其作品也普遍受到當時對新移民感興趣之讀者的喜愛，但當讀者對此類作品的新鮮感過後，且其作品也無法受到當時代美學標準的肯定，葉莎斯嘉便成為這類形銷手法之下的犧牲品──其作品曾一度銷聲匿跡。文中因此指出，現今民族作家的標籤已是司空見慣，對此作者認為應提出質疑及反思，若是持續將民族性凸顯於少數民族作家身上，強調少數民族作家與白人作家之間既有的差異，當代讀者對於所謂民族作家的行銷與閱讀仍陷／限於此二元結構之中，即我們對於民族作家的行銷與消費模式仍舊無法跳脫呈現這些作家的邊緣性與異質性。

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.