Ecocriticism and Asian American Literature: Gold Mountains, Weedflowers and Murky Globes (Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment)

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 andOzeki’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. Acknowledgments Praise for Ecocriticism and Asian American Literature Contents List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Ecocriticism: Surveying the Field 2 Racialized Others: The Ones Left Out References Chapter 2: Prelude: Entering “Nature’s Nation” References Chapter 3: “Naturalizing” Asian Americans: Edith Eaton 1 Native/Nativism 2 Native/Nature/Naturalization 3 Naturalization/Animalization: Pets and Pests 3.1 Pets and Curiosities 3.2 Pests: The Yellow Peril 4 Edith Eaton’s Limited Options 5 Eaton’s “Fauna”: Resisting Naturalization 6 Eaton’s “Flora”: Benevolent Naturalization 7 The Quandary of Racist Animalization References Chapter 4: Thinking (Like a) Gold Mountain: Shawn Wong’s Homebase and Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men 1 Asian/American Land(scapes) 1.1 Asian Americans and the American Land: A Fragile Connection 1.2 Nature and Work: Asian Americans Changing the Face of the Earth 2 Shawn Wong’s Homebase: Claiming America Through Inlanding17 2.1 Nature as Metaphorical Trope 2.2 From Analogy to Human Inlanding 2.3 “Yellowing” the Landscaped Indian 3 Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men: Claiming America Through Land Empathy48 3.1 Land Ethics and Land Empathy 3.2 Homelands: Homelessness and Belonging 3.3 Claiming America Through Land Empathy 4 Agency and Voice: Can (Subaltern) Nature Speak? References Chapter 5: Cultivating the Anti-campo: An Environmental Reading of “Internment Literature” 1 From Camp to Campo8 2 From Homo Sacer to Homo Ecologicus 2.1 Animal Spaces and Environment Shock 2.2 A Dialogue with the New Environment Patterns of Domestication From Failure to Adaptation From Knowledge to Conservation 3 The Pastoral and the Sublime: Escapism or Empowerment? 4 Cultivating the Anti-campo References Chapter 6: Facing the End of Nature: Karen Tei Yamashita and Ruth Ozeki 1 Ecocriticism and the End of Nature7 2 Karen Tei Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rain Forest: Transnational-Transnatural Post-Pastoralism17 2.1 Plastic Flesh 2.2 The Junkyard in the Jungle 2.3 Transnational-Transnatural Post-Pastoralism 3 Ruth Ozeki’s Novels: Materiality and Immateriality 3.1 Meat, Potatoes, and Gyres 3.2 Time-Space Beings: A Tale for a Globalized World46 3.3 Buddhism and Quantum Physics: A Tale of the Immaterial World55 4 The Many Layers of the Ozone Layer, or How to Reconcile the Material and the Immaterial References Chapter 7: Coda: Weedflowers, Gold Mountains, and Murky Globes References Index 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. 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. .