Asian American Studies

Drawing from my current project, Mad Introversions: Unsound Bodyminds in Asian American Literature, this talk examines the genre of “madwoman” diary literature in Asian American feminist writing. I focus on Nieh Hualing’s novel Mulberry and Peach (1981), which incorporates diaries kept and written by the titular “madwomen” as part of a larger assemblage of documents formally embedded in the novel. I argue that the “mad diary,” both as an epistolic form and a confessional genre, troubles the narration of a cohesive, rational, and legible self within larger political projects of resistance. Mad diary writing as a practice disrupts the boundaries between public and private forms of confession, enacting its own mad logic that compels us to confront what exceeds hegemonic state narratives as well as narratives of resistance, solidarity, and liberation. The “madwoman diary” foregrounds a turn to interiority and reflection explored through my larger project, which contends with madness through introverted aesthetics, affects, and practices that are not immediately expressive or legible. Ultimately, my project poses the question: how do individual in/expressions of composure, stillness, quietude, and introspection bear on our collective responses to these mad times?