• 비교문화연구
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• 제20권
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• pp.211-224
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• 2010

In David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly and Shirley Lim's Joss and Gold, two Asian-American texts exploring the relationship between America and Asia, the classic Orientalist motif of the infinitely submissive oriental female is reworked to articulate an Asian response to American hegemony. Both works mobilize the Asian female as a figure of contestation to destabilize and reconceptualize the patriarchal and Orientalist strategies of Western cultural and political domination. This paper explores the tactically different though strategically similar counter-discursive moves adopted in the two works to suggest a broader cultural realignment in Asian-American relations.

• 한국생활과학회지
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• 제11권2호
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• pp.169-175
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• 2002

This paper compared the money beliefs and behaviors and the experiences of four different groups of female college students using furnham's(1984) money Beliefs and Behaviors (MBBS) scale. These four groups were Korean, Japanese, Korean-American, and Japanese American. Two hundreds of female college students were surveyed. Results from an exploratory factor analysis of the MBBS indicate the four factors: Obsession, Power, Anxiety, and Budget. There were significant differences in factors of the money beliefs and behaviors and the selected variables of the money experiences among compared four groups.

• 영미문화
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• 제18권1호
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• pp.53-92
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• 2018

This essay aims to examine chick lit written within the Asian American context. For the most part, the chick lit genre has been typically regarded as a site to study contemporary white women's experiences and to debate the genres' credentials as feminist literature. Though some may disagree, there is general consensus that chick lit has fallen out of vogue after reaching its peak in the first decade of the new millenium.; nevertheless, it is being revisited by readers and critics alike as it has recently re-emerged as a location upon which to examine how race and gender inform notions of national belonging and female subject formation in the twenty-first century. To this end, this essay reads Kim Wong Keltner's The Dim Sum of All Things (2004). Keltner's protagonist Lindsey Owyang is yet another twentysomething "chick" looking for love, self, independence, and success in the huge megalopolis of San Francisco. What sets Lindsey apart from the chick prototype is that she is a third-generation ABC (American-born Chinese) and issues relevant to Asian America frequently make their way into Lindsey's narrative. Though it is generally considered as standing a "few notches above the standard chick-lit fare" (Stover n. pag), I would argue that meaningful reflections on many of the major pillars of Asian American literature, history, and cultural politics are glossed over in favor of cursory musings about the daily vicissitudes of Lindsey's life. This essay thus takes to task Ferriss's claim that a "serious" consideration of chick lit "brings into focus many of the issues facing contemporary women and contemporary culture - issues of identity, of race and class, of femininity and feminism, of consumerism and self-image" (2). I contend that a close examination of Keltner's The Dim Sum of All Things discloses that the chick lit format undermines a "serious consideration" of Asian American issues by presenting in particular a highly problematic representation of race and of Asian American femininity.

• 보건교육건강증진학회지
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• 제26권1호
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• pp.93-104
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• 2009

Objectives: Although Asian immigrants have lower rates of smoking and binge drinking than other ethnics in the US, Korean Americans have the highest rate of Asian immigrants. This study, therefore, compared with the rates and examined the predictors of smoking and binge drinking by gender and ethnicity among Asian immigrants in California. Methods: In 2001 and 2003, California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) were conducted in English and their original languages with Asian immigrants residing in 58 Counties and 3 Cities, California. We performed analysis to find out the differences of smoking and binge drinking rates using the secondary data, CHIS 2001 and 2003. Multiple logistic regression analysis for survey data identified predictors of smoking and binge drinking behaviors by gender and ethnicity. Results: Korean American males (35.4%) and Japanese American females (15.4%) had higher rates of smoking prevalence compared with other Asian immigrants in California. In binge drinking, 26.5% of male and 8.1% of female among Korean Americans were binge drinker, and the rates were the top with Asian Americans who had lived in California. It showed the remarkable gap between gender of smoking and binge drinking among Vietnamese immigrants, whereas not the striking difference among Japanese Americans. In multiple regression models, age, educational level, occupation, marital status, English proficiency, and health insurance coverage remained significant for smoking and binge drinking behaviors(P<0.05). Even though the time in the US was not significant, it seemed to be related to educational level and English proficiency. In particular among female, smoking and binge drinking behaviors were associated with acculturation. Conclusion: Although Asian Americans had shared with American culture since they had immigrated in the US, they had significantly different prevalence rates of smoking and binge drinking based on gender and ethnicity. Therefore, future efforts should be focused on understanding differences by ethnicity and target at high-risk subgroups. To achieve this, it needs to develop the educational materials in Korean and their original languages.

• 비교문화연구
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• 제24권
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• pp.46-61
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• 2011

This paper considers how Koreans found their positions in the complex, overlapping, disjunctive, and interconnected "Oriental" repertoires in the early Cold War years. When we use the term, Oriental, it should require careful translation from context to context because it may be subject to very different sets of contextual circumstances. Klein views Cold War Orientalism in the complex of various regions including East Asian and Southeast Asian countries; however, when Koreans are contextualized at the center of the discussion the Orientalism produces another discursive meaning. Even though many great researches have been done on Korean immigrations, Korean American literatures, and US-Korea economic, political, and foreign relations, not many discussions about Korean American popular cultures have been discussed in the basis of the Oriental discourse in the United States.For this argument, this paper investigates the performative trajectory of a girl group "Kim Sisters" who began to sing at the US military show stages in South Korea in 1952 during the Korean War. They moved to Las Vegas show stages in 1959 and later appeared in Ed Sullivan Show more than thirty times during the 1960s and 70s. Meanwhile, they not only returned to South Korea often times to perform at the stages for Korean audiences in South Korea but also played at the shows for Korean immigrants in the United States. Korean American immigration to the United States has followed a different route from the majority of Asian American population such as Chinese or Japanese Americans, which means that efforts to compare this particular group to the others may be unnecessary. Rather doing comparative studies, this paper, therefore, focuses on the formation of the intersecting and multiple identities of Korean female entertainers who were forced or forced themselves to be incorporated into the American popular "Oriental" imagination, which I would call "embedded" identities. This embeddedness has been continuously maintained in the configuration of Korean characters in the United States. This will help not only to observe the discursive aspect of Asian American identity politics but also to claim a space for comparatively invisible Korean characters in the United States which has been often times neglected and not brought into a major Asian American or Oriental historical discourse. This paper starts with American scenes at the beginning of the twentieth century to trace Americans Oriental imagination which was observable in the various American cultural landscape and popular music soundscape. It will help us more clearly understand the production and consumption of the Korean "Oriental" performances during the early Cold War period and especially the Korean performance in the American venue, silently overshadowed into the political, social, and cultural framework.

• International Journal of Human Ecology
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.9-18
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• 2007

This study focuses on the relationship between ethnic identity of Asian-Americans and their appreciation of their ethnic body features, based on reference group theory. A convenience sample of 60 male and 52 female students from various Asian ethnicities attending a mid-western university was used for the study. A 2 (gender) by 2 (ethnic identification) by 2 (socializing group) analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) on body image satisfaction as dependent variable and Body Mass Index score as a covariate was conducted. A significant main effect of ethnic identification was found, which indicates the more respondents identified with their ethnic group, the more likely they were to be satisfied with their appearance. The social group affiliation main effect was not significant. The impact of ethnic identification was significant only for those respondents who socialize more with Americans than with Asians. The results support the idea that one's ethnic group functions as a reference group, which influences body image appraisals.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제15권20호
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• pp.8941-8946
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• 2014

Background: This study conducted to determine breast cancer awareness and influencing factors among nursing students in the West Black Sea Region in Turkey. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted between April-May, 2014. The sample was 270 female nursing students. Data were collected by Personal Information Form and Champion's Health Belief Model Scale (CHBMS). Results: The students' mean age was $21.6{\pm}2.09$ and 81.1% had knowledge about breast cancer from their academic education. It is found that 63.7% of the students performed Breast Self-Examination (BSE) and 11.1% had a family member diagnosed with breast cancer. The CHBMS mean score of the students was $117.7{\pm}14.5$. Conclusions: Breast cancer awareness of nursing students is on a good level and was affected by family history of breast cancer and health beliefs.

• 영미문화
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• 제10권2호
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• pp.1-27
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• 2010

By taking the form of a fictional autobiography, a Japanese American woman writer Lydia Minatoya tries to solve the inexpressible confliction which Japanese Americans experience in their living in America. In her first published fiction, Talking to High Monks in the Snow, the writer faithfully tries to follow the Japanese I-story tradition where meandering of personal petit histories and frequent self-pities are constructed without solid action, characters and plot. Here appear many accidental others whom function as significant yet fleeting subalterns. In contrast, in the second fiction, The Strangeness of Beauty published seven years later, the I-narratives undergoes some drastic transformations by authorial intrusion, dramatic and haiku styles, and appearances of actorial agents. Just working as an invisible yet important stagehand (kuroko in Japanese) behind the stage of life, the author now handles her own self-inquiry through more controllable distance and maturity as directors or photographers often do. However, despite achieving dramatic actions and artistic elegance mainly thanks to her adoption of western masterpieces's grand narratives, Minatoya seems to stop in the midway in her tallying work of fiction with fact by delaying the larger imaginable conflict through which the temporarily gained autonomy can be turned into a disaster anytime. Nonetheless, the reader feels relieved and encouraged after recognizing the fragile Asian female self's transformation as a new, flexible and autonomous self by her unwavering contact with two contrasting cultures and providing silent minority female characters with gradually stronger and uncannier voices.

• 미국학
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• 제41권1호
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• pp.179-202
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• 2018

This study approaches the novel from psychodynamic perspectives, where the narrative is woven into the strands of traumatic memories and past. Deriving from Julia Kristeva's discussion on melancholia, this paper discreetly examines Hata as a melancholic, who is unaware of what he has lost and even that he has lost. Racially abject but in defiance of his separation from 'the mother,' Hata introjects loss as his own subjectivity. The insoluble void causes him to wander through the bravado of belongingness, which he eventually transforms into Sublimation. This paper reads that Hata finally faces his own black sun, deviating from his earlier gesture life; thus, the novel becomes a successful case study of the melancholic. However, female bodies are at stake, subsumed under Hata's sexual perversion. The novel renders trauma behind the fragmented narrative of an Asian American man at the expense of consuming morbid 'feminine' bodies physically and psychologically.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제17권7호
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• pp.3469-3476
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• 2016

Background: The cancer research literature suggests that women, especially premenopausal women, have lower cancer mortality rates than men. However, it is unclear if that is true for populations at all age levels in all countries and what factors affect such sex differences. This paper attempts to fill that gap. Materials and Methods: Sex- and country-specific cancer mortality data were statistically analyzed with particular attention to geographic, social, and economic factors that may affect the sex differences. Results: The sex differences were age and country specific, rather than universal. Premenopausal women actually tend to have a disadvantage compared to men or postmenopausal women. Male cancer mortality appears to be the affecting factor in explaining variations in sex differences. Latitude of residence and literacy rate are the affecting factors in cancer mortality and sex differences. African and Latin American countries tend to have a female disadvantage, while East Asian and Eastern European countries are more likely to have a female advantage. Conclusions: The findings challenge the cancer mortality literature and indicate that the sex differences and their possible causes are more complicated than the current literature suggests. They also highlight the urgency of adapting age- and country- specific health systems and policies to better meet the needs of younger women.