Title: Southwest Asia : the transpacific geographies of Chicana/o literature /
Authors: Sae-Saue, Jayson Gonzales,
Year: 2016
Subjects: American literature Mexican American authors History and criticism; Mexican Americans Asia.; Internationalism in literature.; American literature Mexican American authors.; Internationalism in literature.; Mexican Americans; Asia
Abstract: "Chicana/o literature is justly acclaimed for the ways it voices opposition to the dominant Anglo culture, speaking for communities ignored by mainstream American media. Yet the world depicted in these texts is not solely inhabited by Anglos and Chicanos; as this groundbreaking new book shows, Asian characters are cast in peripheral but nonetheless pivotal roles. Southwest Asia investigates why key Chicana/o writers, including Américo Paredes, Rolando Hinojosa, Oscar Acosta, Miguel Méndez, and Virginia Grise, from the 1950s to the present day, have persistently referenced Asian people and places in the course of articulating their political ideas. Jayson Gonzales Sae-Saue takes our conception of Chicana/o literature as a transnational movement in a new direction, showing that it is not only interested in North-South migrations within the Americas, but is also deeply engaged with East-West interactions across the Pacific. He also raises serious concerns about how these texts invariably marginalize their Asian characters, suggesting that darker legacies of imperialism and exclusion might lurk beneath their utopian visions of a Chicana/o nation. Southwest Asia provides a fresh take on the Chicana/o literary canon, analyzing how these writers have depicted everything from interracial romances to the wars Americans fought in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. As it examines novels, plays, poems, and short stories, the book makes a compelling case that Chicana/o writers have long been at the forefront of theorizing U.S.--Asian relations." -- Publisher's description
Contents: Introduction: The promise and problem of interracial politics for Chicana/o culture -- Racial equivalence and the transpacific geographies of Chicana/o nationalism in Vietnam Campesino, the revolt of the cockroach people, and pilgrims in Aztlán -- Forging and forgetting transpacific identities in Américo Paredes's "Ichiro Kikuchi" and Rolando Hinojosa's Korean love songs -- Conquest and desire: interracial sex in Daniel Cano's shifting loyalties and Alfredo Véa's Gods go begging -- Through Mexico and into Asia: a search for cultural origins in Rudolfo Anaya's A Chicano in China -- Chinese immigration, mixed-race families, and China-cana feminisms in Virginia Grise's Rasgos Asiáticos -- Coda: Chicano studies then and now: paradigms of past and future critique.