Talk:Asian American literature

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 January 2020 and 13 March 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): NK560.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 17:35, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2019 and 6 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Cwalker96.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:50, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Purpose of the page
This page is being created by the Asian American Literature class at The University of Southern California, and will be under construction until November 10, 2009 by the class. Please do not delete or edit this page until that time. Thank you. --Adhishyajnik (talk) 20:25, 3 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a classroom tool. I suggest you establish your own private wiki where the students can work on this project on their own, or (at least) move this to a Wikipedia user subpage instead of the article namespace.  Just because you ask nicely does not prevent the article from being deleted if it does not meet Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:09, 3 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I understand that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. The aim of our project is to create a well-researched and well-written article about Asian American Literature because Wikipedia currently lacks one. I wouldn't call it a classroom tool, and I wouldn't belittle the project for that reason. We're drafting the article on xwiki, but we hoped that we could at least create the article that we'll eventually publish on in the Wikipedia namespace, which did not yet exist. If the article does get deleted, we will wait to create the article once we have material to publish. I hope that meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion at that time. --Adhishyajnik (talk) 21:51, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion
If the class wants to work on an article in peace, with no one else editing it, I suggest putting it in someone's WP:Userspace. (For example, to take one of you at random, User:Adhishyajnik/Asian American literature). Generally, no one will interfere with you there. In WP:Mainspace, you don't get to call dibs on an article. This article can be edited by anyone.

That said, if all of you read our Welcome Page to see how articles are formatted, linked, and sourced (in particular, note WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:NOT), I think having your class create an article in a user subpage, or contribute along with the rest of us to this article, would be fantastic. Indeed, that's what we're all about.

Please let me know if you have any questions. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:53, 3 September 2009 (UTC)


 * You folks might be interested in School and university projects. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:12, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

More history about individual authors?
Right now the article uses up more space talking about Aiiieeeee! than it does any particular author, and the only author it does talk about in any detail is Maxine Hong Kingston. Both Aiiieeeee! and Kingston are extremely important, but there's so much more to talk about. I'm thinking about making a History section similar to what the African-American literature article has and starting out by writing a few paragraphs about some of the more prominent pre-70s writers (such as those included in Aiiieeeee!). I've been reading through The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature which has quite a wealth of historical information and sources, so that might be helpful.

I figured I'd post here before I started making any changes since I'm new to editing Wikipedia and wanted to check in with everybody who's been maintaining this article before I do anything drastic. Are there any other first steps any of you can think of for improving this article? Woodswillfill (talk) 07:44, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I haven't worked on this page (yet), but I had a very similar sense of the need for a drastic overhaul when I came upon it a few weeks ago. African-American literature also seemed to me a useful page for (unflattering) comparison. I strongly agree that a History section is sorely needed as the main focus of the page, preferably with subsections for periods, genres. There's also an impulse to distinguish sub-nationalities, but that should probably be resisted to some extent since this page is specifically about Asian American literature, not individual-Asian-countries-American literature, which can have their own pages (although currently only Chinese American literature does). I'm sure most readers would prefer to take their history in the form of a narrative, if that can be managed, not simply a list of writers, especially as there's already a list page for that. At present, most of the content here is about development of the field and controversies; these are central topics, no doubt, but making them the focus of the page feels like the tail wagging the dog. From an editorial standpoint, the sections about Characteristics and Themes, Identity, and Visibility, could probably be combined and condensed somewhat. And I wonder if the discussion about definitions at the beginning might merit its own section. The natural organization would probably be something like: Definitions / History / Themes and Controversies. The African American Literature page puts Themes and Controversies first, and I suppose some might prefer that, as it provides a sort of summary. But it's essentially about interpretations, so it seems to me more natural to put it after the History sections.Icuc2 (talk) 09:18, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Page could be more synthesized
This page could be more “Wikipedian” in its tone and quality, Jenny8lee (talk) 07:49, 24 August 2023 (UTC)