Ecocriticism and Asian American Literature: Gold Mountains, Weedflowers and Murky Globes

ISBN-13: 9783030356200 / Angielski / Miękka / 2021 / 273 str.

Bego?a Simal-Gonz?lez

Spis treści

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION                                                                                     1

 

1.1 ECOCRITICISM: SURVEYING THE FIELD          

1.2 RACIALIZED OTHERS: THE ONES LEFT OUT   

 

 

Chapter 2: PRELUDE – entering nature’s nation                                           29

 

 

CHAPTER 3: “Naturalizing” Asian Americans: Edith Eaton                         47

 

3.1. Native / Nativism         

3.2. Native / Nature / Naturalization        

3.3. Naturalization / Animalization: Pets and Pests          

3.3.1. Pets and curiosities

3.3.2. Pests: The Yellow Peril           

3.4. Edith Eaton’s Limited Options

3.5. Eaton’s “Fauna”: Resisting Naturalization    

3.6. Eaton’s “Flora”: Benevolent Naturalization

3.7. The Quandary of Racist Animalization            

 

 

CHAPTER 4: Thinking (like a) Gold Mountain: Maxine Hong Kingston and Shawn Wong                                                                           93

 

4.1. Asian/American Land(scapes) 

4.1.1. Asian Americans and the American Land: A Fragile Connection      

4.1.2. Nature and Work: Asian Americans Changing the face of the Earth            

4.2. Shawn Wong’s Homebase: Claiming America through Inlanding      

4.2.1. NATURE AS METAPHORICAL TROPE          

4.2.2. FROM ANALOGY TO HUMAN INLANDING               

4.2.3. “YELLOWING” THE LANDSCAPED INDIAN

4.3. Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men: Claiming America through Land Empathy         

4.3.1. LAND ETHICS AND LAND EMPATHY           

4.3.2. HOMELANDS: HOMELESSNESS AND BELONGING  

4.3.3. CLAIMING AMERICA THROUGH LAND EMPATHY   

4.4. AGENCY AND VOICE: CAN (SUBALTERN) NATURE SPEAK?      

 

 

 

CHAPTER 5: Cultivating the Anti-Campo: AN ENVIRONMENTAL READING OF “Internment Literature”                                                                           155

 

5.1- FROM CAMP TO CAMPO 

5.2- FROM HOMO SACER TO HOMO ECOLOGICUS           

5.2.1. ANIMAL SPACES AND ENVIRONMENTAL SHOCK   

5.2.2. A DIALOGUE WITH THE NEW ENVIRONMENT         

5.3. THE PASTORAL AND THE SUBLIME: ESCAPISM OR EMPOWERMENT?  

5.4. CULTIVATING THE ANTICAMPO     

 

CHAPTER 6: Facing the End of Nature: Karen Tei Yamashita and Ruth Ozeki     217

6.1. ECOCRITICISM AND THE END OF NATURE   

6.2. KAREN TEI yamashita’S THROUGH THE ARC OF THE RAINFOREST: Transnational-Transnatural POST-PastoralISM            

6.2.1. PLASTIC FLESH

6.2.2. THE JUNKYARD IN THE JUNGLE  

6.2.3. TRANSNATIONAL-TRANSNATURAL POST-PASTORALISM     

6.3. RUTH OZEKI’S NOVELS: MATERIALITY AND IMMATERIALITY  

6.3.1. MEAT, POTATOES AND GYRES    

6.3.2. Time-SPACE Beings: A Tale for A Globalized World   

6.3.2. BUDDHISM AND QUANTUM PHYSICS: a tale of the invisible world       

6.4. THE MANY LAYERS OF THE OZONE LAYER, OR HOW TO RECONCILE THE MATERIAL AND THE IMMATERIAL

 

 

Chapter 7: CODA: GOLD MOUNTAINS, WEEDFLOWERS AND MURKY GLOBES          285

O autorze

Begoña Simal-González is Professor and Head of the American Studies Research Group (CLEU), at the Universidade da Coruña, Spain. Her research focuses on Asian American literature, globalization and ecocriticism. 

 

Blurb

Ecocriticism and Asian American Literature: Gold Mountains, Weedflowers and Murky Globes offers an ecocritical reinterpretation of Asian American literature. The book considers more than a century of Asian American writing, from Eaton’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912) to Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being (2013), through an ecocritical lens. The volume explores the most relevant landmarks in Asian American literature: the first-contact narratives written by Bulosan, Kingston, Mukherjee and Jen; the controversial texts published by Sui Sin Far (Edith Eaton) at the time of the Yellow Peril; the rise of cultural nationalism in the 1970s and 1980s, illustrated by Wong’s Homebase and Kingston’s China Men; old and recent examples of “internment literature” dealing with the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII (Sone, Houston, Miyake, Kadohata); and the new trends in Asian American literature since the 1990s, exemplified by Yamashita’s and Ozeki’s novels, which explore the challenges of our transnational, transnatural era. Begoña Simal-González’s ecocritical readings of these texts provide crucial interdisciplinary insights, addressing and analyzing important narratives within Asian American culture and literature.