Home and Homeland in Asian Diaspora : Transnational Reflections in Art, Literature, and Film

While many of us may strive to locate a sense of identity and belonging expressed via a home or ancestral homeland; today, however, this connection is no longer, if it ever was, a straightforward identification. This collection aims at mapping narratives or artwork of home/homeland that present shared, private, multifaceted, and often contested experiences of place, especially in the context of today’s migrations and upheavals, along with alarming degrees of increased nativism, racism, and anti-Asian violence. This volume includes papers by artists, filmmakers, and comparative scholars from diverse disciplines of literature, cinema, art history, cultural studies, and gender studies. Our goal is to help literary and art historian scholars in Asian diaspora studies, better decolonize and open up traditional research methodologies, curricula, and pedagogies. Acknowledgments Contents Notes on Contributors List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction: Interdisciplinary Expressions of Home and the Ancestral Homeland in Asian Diaspora Introduction Homes and Ancestral Homelands Asian Diasporas: “I Call into Question Your Naming of Me. I Trust Your Sight No More” (Kingston 70) The Chapters Part I: Home is Where You Are—Reimagining Homescapes and Identities Part II: Multifaceted Geographies and Affiliations—Renegotiating Notions of Home and Identity Part III: Navigating Public History and Private Memories of Home/Land—Space, Sexuality, and Gender Roles Part IV: Unpacking Hierarchies of Affiliation and Belonging Involved in a “Return” Journey to an Ancestral Homeland Works Cited Part I: Home Is Where You Are: Reimagining Homescapes and Identities Chapter 2: Bao and Turning Red: Eating Chinese in Bloody Toronto Works Cited Chapter 3: Representation of Comfort Women in Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life and Christina Park’s The Homes We Build on Ashes Works Cited Chapter 4: Belonging Through Faith: Promised Home/Land in Min Jin Lee’s Free Food for Millionaires Works Cited Part II: Multifaceted Geographies and Affiliations: Renegotiating Notions of Home and Identity Chapter 5: Un/homing in an Indigenous Land: Chinese and the Indigenous in Ling Zhang’s “Toward the North” Works Cited Chapter 6: Homeland Films Without Homeland: Examining Homeland in Soleen Yusef’s Haus ohne Dach [House Without Roof] (2016) Works Cited Chapter 7: A Sri Lankan Finding and Defining Home in Australia: Sunil Govinnage’s Writings Works Cited Chapter 8: East Is East (1997) as a Black Comedy of Asian Diasporic Homemaking in 1970s Britain Works Cited Part III: Navigating Public History and Private Memories of Home/Land: Space, Sexuality, and Gender Roles Chapter 9: Home and Reformed Identities: A Study of Deepa Mehta’s Queer Diasporic Film Fire Works Cited Chapter 10: Indian Womanhood as the Site of Home in Lakshmi Persaud’s Sastra Works Cited Chapter 11: “She Who Is Limitless, Without Borders”: “The Domain of Intimacy” in Lahiri’s The Namesake Works Cited Part IV: Unpacking Hierarchies of Affiliation and Belonging Involved in a “Return” Journey to an Ancestral Homeland Chapter 12: NowHere and NoWhere: There’s No Place Like Home in Beth Yahp’s Eat First, Talk Later Works Cited Chapter 13: Transkoreaning: Decolonizing Adopted Identity Through Artistic Practices and a Return to Home Works Cited Selected Bibliography Index