The girl protagonists in Jean Kwok's "Girl in Translation" and Kelly Yang's "Front Desk" embody and reinterpret the notion of "guai" (loosely translated as "good") in their struggle to adapt to life in America. "Guai" is the most important concept governing childhood in Chinese societies. The word,…

Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" Saga has achieved extraordinary popularity and scholars have interrogated the nature of its appeal from a variety of perspectives. Its popularity raises questions because in many ways it mirrors romantic fictions from the 1960s and 1970s. Such fictions have been read by critics as expressions of female…