Ecocriticism and Asian American Literature

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Begoña Simal-González

   Pages 1-26

3. Prelude: Entering “Nature’s Nation”

   • Begoña Simal-González

   Pages 27-42

4. “Naturalizing” Asian Americans: Edith Eaton

   • Begoña Simal-González

   Pages 43-88

5. Thinking (Like a) Gold Mountain: Shawn Wong’s Homebase and Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men

   • Begoña Simal-González

   Pages 89-145

6. Cultivating the Anti-campo: An Environmental Reading of “Internment Literature”

   • Begoña Simal-González

   Pages 147-206

7. Facing the End of Nature: Karen Tei Yamashita and Ruth Ozeki

   • Begoña Simal-González

   Pages 207-266

8. Coda: Weedflowers, Gold Mountains, and Murky Globes

   • Begoña Simal-González

   Pages 267-269

9. Back Matter

   Pages 271-273

   PDF

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. 

 

• ecocritical reading
• literature and the environment
• Asian American Literature
• Chinese American literature
• Japanese American literature
• Japanese internment literature
• Maxine Hong Kingston
• Edith Eaton

“Nothing could be further from the ‘add-ecocriticism-and-stir’ approach to literary studies than Begoña Simal-González’s engaging, erudite, and utterly unpredictable book. Rereading key works of Chinese American and Japanese American literature through the twin lenses of critical race theory and ecocriticism, Simal-González excavates time- and place-specific botanical and zoological imaginaries deeply embedded in texts that are not explicitly about nature. Though I’ve been reading and teaching works by Sui Sin Far, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Karen Tei Yamashita for decades, Simal-González’s theoretically informed close readings, which tease out the ‘environmental unconscious,’ made me see those works anew. The magisterial scope of this study, which reaches back to the 1880s and goes as far forward as the 2010s, allows Simal-González to show a wide range of literary deployments of nature, from Sui Sin Far’s anti-racist plant and animal imagery to Chinese railroad and agricultural workers’ imagined community with the land they transformed through their labor.”

—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)

• Universidade de Coruña, A Coruña, Galicia, Spain

  Begoña Simal-González

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. 

 

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