Overview
- Brings attention to the ecocritical potential of Asian American writing
- Contributes to the study of race and nature
- Addresses important narratives within Asian American culture and literature including nationalism and immigration, internment, and transnationalism
Part of the book series: Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment (LCE)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
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.
Reviews
—Dominika Ferens, Associate Professor, University of Wroclaw, Poland, and author of Edith and Winnifred Eaton (2002)
“A landmark text, uniquely comprehensive in its scope, Ecocriticism and Asian American Literature engages a conversation long overdue—transforming both ecocriticism and Asian American literary studies in the process. Begoña Simal-González’s thoughtful approach returns us to such issues as farming, internment, cultural nationalism, and transnationalism and diaspora, resituating these in a robustly historical environmental context. Essential reading for those interested in environmental justice in American literature.”
—Molly Wallace, Associate Professor, Queen's University, Canada, and author of Risk Criticism (2016)
“Begoña Simal-González's book on ecocriticism is a most welcome addition to Asian American literary studies. All the writers included in the volume are not only unique voices that deserve a formal hearing but also pioneers in ecological interventions, as Professor Simal-González so persuasively demonstrated in her book.”
—King-Kok Cheung, Professor of English and Asian American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, USA, and author of Chinese American Literature without Borders (2016)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
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.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Ecocriticism and Asian American Literature
Book Subtitle: Gold Mountains, Weedflowers and Murky Globes
Authors: Begoña Simal-González
Series Title: Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35618-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-35617-0Published: 25 January 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-35620-0Published: 25 January 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-35618-7Published: 24 January 2020
Series ISSN: 2946-3157
Series E-ISSN: 2946-3165
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 273
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations, 4 illustrations in colour
Topics: Asian Literature, Literary Theory, Environmental Communication