American Vs. Woman: Asian American Identity and Queer Intimacy in <American Woman>

Abstract

Susan Choi bases her second novel, American Woman, on a famous kidnapping case of the 1970s. Patty Hearst, when she declared that she would join her radical kidnappers, stirred public anxiety over the dominant family and national values. Focusing on a Japanese American Woman who was arrested with Hearst and represented as “the model minority” in an attempt to undermine the political effects of Hearst’s rebellion, Choi explores the implications of queer insight for the question of Asian American identity. Jenny Shimada, the fictional counterpart of the Japanese American Woman, finds herself constantly read as a poor third world or mysteriously oriental girl. She is never accepted as an American, nor can she imagine herself as a properly mature woman. Choi traces this problem to Jenny’s father’s internment experience during the Second World War. Jenny finds different ways of imagining and presenting herself only when she develops a queer relationship with Pauline, a fictional counterpart to Patty Hearst. Choi’s depiction of queer intimacy between the two women reveals the terms and conditions, as well as omissions, implicit in the phrase “American Woman.” Choi’s queer imagination thus helps her readers imagine alternative identities outside the dominant norms of the national and public culture, as well as alternative ways of storytelling that reveal silenced connections and possibilities.