Asian American Model Minority: Complicity, Victimization, and Defiance

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to a Special Issue of the peer-reviewed, open-access journal, Literature, entitled “Asian American Model Minority: Complicity, Victimization, and Defiance”. In light of the Black Lives Matter movement, anti-Asian violence in the wake of COVID-19, and the escalating tension between the United States and China, we would like to explore Asian American complicity with hegemonic cultures (both the US and China) in discriminating against people of African descent and against Asian ethnic groups that do not measure up to the capitalist definition of success. No less disconcerting is the rising anti-Asian violence post-COVID-19. The perpetrators include people of all colors, and Asian women and LGBTQ groups seem to be predominantly targeted. Literature by Asian American writers may be the most nuanced in addressing the precarious positionality of Asian Americans as oppressors and victims, in both debunking the stereotypes of the model minority and acknowledging its perilous hold—not only in the popular imagination but via internalization.

This Special Issue aims to address the conundrum of the Asian American model minority and to amend the too-common association of Asian Americans with people of Far East descent only. We would like to diversify both the contributors (by soliciting essays from non-Asians, Asians of various ethnicities, and trans-Pacific and transatlantic scholars) and the subject matter (by including works by authors of South-, Southeast Asian, South American, and Caribbean descent).

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following: media representation, the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, the Black Lives Matter movement, law and literature, the COVID-19 pandemic, gender/sexuality/passing, comparative religions, ecocriticism, (post)colonialism, and various wars (WWII, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, trade wars, etc.).

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. King-Kok Cheung
Dr. Robert Kyriakos Smith
Dr. Hannah Nahm
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Literature is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• model minority
• interracial dynamics
• Asian-Black relations
• Black Lives Matter
• COVID-19
• mixed-race identity
• intersectionality
• ecocriticism
• (post)colonialism