Full Description
This book is a ground-breaking transnational study of representations of the environment in Asian American literature. Extending and renewing Asian American studies and ecocriticism by drawing the two fields into deeper dialogue, it brings Asian American writers to the center of ecocritical studies. This collection demonstrates the distinctiveness of Asian American writers' positions on topics of major concern today: environmental justice, identity and the land, war environments, consumption, urban environments, and the environment and creativity. Represented authors include Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ruth Ozeki, Ha Jin, Fae Myenne Ng, Le Ly Hayslip, Lan Cao, Mitsuye Yamada, Lawson Fusao Inada, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Milton Murayama, Don Lee, and Hisaye Yamamoto. These writers provide a range of perspectives on the historical, social, psychological, economic, philosophical, and aesthetic responses of Asian Americans to the environment conceived in relation to labor, racism, immigration, domesticity, global capitalism, relocation, pollution, violence, and religion. Contributors apply a diversity of critical frameworks, including critical radical race studies, counter-memory studies, ecofeminism, and geomantic criticism. The book presents a compelling and timely "green" perspective through which to understand key works of Asian American literature and leads the field of ecocriticism into neglected terrain.
Contents
Introduction: Ecocriticism and Asian American Literature John Gamber Part 1: The Environment and Labor 1. Environmental Narratives of American Identity: Landscape and Belonging in Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men and Milton Murayama's All I Asking for Is My Body Andrea Aebersold 2. Fae Myenne Ng's San Francisco Chinatown as a Social Space of Legal Discrimination Wenying Xu 3. "Delving and Carving Rude Nature": An Ecocritical Reading of Don Lee's Wrack and Ruin Bella Adams Part 2: The Environment and Violence 4. Contested "Frontier" and "Pioneers" in Writings about Japanese American Concentration Camps Zhou Xiaojing 5. Tilling the Soil in the Killing Fields: Cambodian American War Memoirs Helena Grice 6. Ecological Imaginations, the Vietnam War, and Vietnamese American Literature Cathy J. Schlund-Vials 7. "Guns, Race, Meat, and Manifest Destiny": Environmental Neocolonialism and Ecofeminism in Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats Youngsuk Chae Part 3: The Environment and Philosophy 8. Hisaye Yamamoto as Radical Agrarian Sarah D. Wald 9. A Geomantic Reading of Asian Diasporic Literature Stephen L. Field 10. Environment for "A Free Life" King-Kok Cheung Afterword David Eng
