Mo Yan, the most prolific writer in present-day China as well as one of its most prominent avant-gardists, is an author whose literary works have enjoyed an enormous readership and have caught much critical attention not only in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan but also in many other countries around the world. This book provides the most comprehensive exposition of Mo Yan's fiction in any language. Author Shelly Chan delves into Mo Yan's entire collection of literary works, considering novels as well as short stories and novellas. In this analysis, Mo Yan's works are dealt with in a diachronic fashion--Chan discusses the development of Mo Yan's style throughout his career by considering themes that he has addressed in a variety of narratives over time. This provides the reader with valuable insight into understanding how individual narratives fit into the entire collection of Mo Yan's body of literary work. Scholars will also welcome the book's extensive reference to secondary scholarship and theory, which skillfully deals with the Chinese scholarship and thoroughly covers the English-language sources on Mo Yan as well. This book on one of the most important figures in contemporary Chinese literary history will be a landmark resource for scholars in Asian studies, cultural studies, and literary criticism, as well as an enticing read for people interested in Chinese literature and historical fiction.

Literary and Visual Representations of HIV/AIDS: Forty Years Later depicts how film and literature about the HIV/AIDS crisis expand upon the issues generated by the epidemic. This collection fills an important gap in the scholarship on HIV/AIDS, by bringing together essays by both established and junior scholars on visual and literary representations of HIV/AIDS. Almost forty years after the first reported cases of what would later be defined as AIDS, this book looks back across the decades at works of literature and film to discuss how the representation of HIV/AIDS has shifted in media. This book argues that literature constitutes a very powerful response to AIDS that ripples into film and politics, driving the changes in past and contemporary representations of HIV/AIDS. The book also expands discussion of the issues generated and amplified by the epidemic to consider how HIV/AIDS has been portrayed in the United States, Western and Southern Africa, Western Europe, and East Asia.

Gender and Food in Transnational East Asias illustrates how the production and consumption of food impacts the changing social positions of individuals and their relationships with their families, the state, and their work, as well as shapes their gender, sexual, ethnic, and national identities. The transnational movement of food and people between East Asia and the rest of the world is increasingly visible, forming various forces behind the cultural and political constructions of gender politics among and beyond Asian diasporas. It argues that a critical engagement with practices and representations of food from gender perspectives can enhance our understanding of the society and culture of transnational East Asia.

Literary and Visual Representations of HIV/AIDS: Forty Years Later depicts how film and literature about the HIV/AIDS crisis expand upon the issues generated by the epidemic. This collection fills an important gap in the scholarship on HIV/AIDS, by bringing together essays by both established and junior scholars on visual and literary representations of HIV/AIDS. Almost forty years after the first reported cases of what would later be defined as AIDS, this book looks back across the decades at works of literature and film to discuss how the representation of HIV/AIDS has shifted in media. This book argues that literature constitutes a very powerful response to AIDS that ripples into film and politics, driving the changes in past and contemporary representations of HIV/AIDS. The book also expands discussion of the issues generated and amplified by the epidemic to consider how HIV/AIDS has been portrayed in the United States, Western and Southern Africa, Western Europe, and East Asia.