Steven G. Yao
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199730339
- eISBN:
- 9780199866540
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730339.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This book undertakes linguistically informed analyses to examine the various transpacific signifying strategies by which different poets of Chinese descent in the United States have ...
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This book undertakes linguistically informed analyses to examine the various transpacific signifying strategies by which different poets of Chinese descent in the United States have sought to employ or represent elements of a particular cultural tradition in their articulations of an ethnic subjectivity, including writings entirely in Chinese. The study maps a new methodology and an expanded textual arena for Asian American literary studies that can be used and further explored by scholars possessing knowledge of other traditions and different linguistic competencies. In assessing both the dynamics and the politics of poetic expression by writers engaging with a specific cultural tradition or heritage, this study develops a general theory of ethnic literary production that clarifies the significance of “Asian American” literature in relation to both other forms of U.S. “minority discourse,” as well as canonical “American” literature more generally. The book discusses a range of works, including Ezra Pound’s Cathay and the Angel Island poems. Additionally, it examines the careers of four contemporary Chinese/American poets: Ha Jin, Li-Young Lee, Marilyn Chin, and John Yau, each of whom bears a distinctive relationship to the linguistic and cultural tradition he or she seeks to represent. Specifically, the book analyzes the range of rhetorical and formal strategies by which these writers have sought to incorporate Chinese culture and especially language in constructing a cultural or ethnic subjectivity.Less
This book undertakes linguistically informed analyses to examine the various transpacific signifying strategies by which different poets of Chinese descent in the United States have sought to employ or represent elements of a particular cultural tradition in their articulations of an ethnic subjectivity, including writings entirely in Chinese. The study maps a new methodology and an expanded textual arena for Asian American literary studies that can be used and further explored by scholars possessing knowledge of other traditions and different linguistic competencies. In assessing both the dynamics and the politics of poetic expression by writers engaging with a specific cultural tradition or heritage, this study develops a general theory of ethnic literary production that clarifies the significance of “Asian American” literature in relation to both other forms of U.S. “minority discourse,” as well as canonical “American” literature more generally. The book discusses a range of works, including Ezra Pound’s Cathay and the Angel Island poems. Additionally, it examines the careers of four contemporary Chinese/American poets: Ha Jin, Li-Young Lee, Marilyn Chin, and John Yau, each of whom bears a distinctive relationship to the linguistic and cultural tradition he or she seeks to represent. Specifically, the book analyzes the range of rhetorical and formal strategies by which these writers have sought to incorporate Chinese culture and especially language in constructing a cultural or ethnic subjectivity.
Yuan Shu, Otto Heim, and Kendall Johnson (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9789888455775
- eISBN:
- 9789882204034
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888455775.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
As part of the paradigm shift from the transatlantic to the transpacific in transnational American studies, this volume not only offers critical ways in which we rethink American exceptionalism, but ...
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As part of the paradigm shift from the transatlantic to the transpacific in transnational American studies, this volume not only offers critical ways in which we rethink American exceptionalism, but it also engages the critical visions represented by New American studies, Asian studies, Asian American studies, and Pacific studies. By calling attention to the “oceanic archives” and indigenous epistemologies, the volume addresses colonialism and imperialism at their roots from both sides of the colonizer and the colonized and articulates what has been central to de-colonial thinking—indigenous epistemologies and ontologies, non-Western knowledge production and dissemination. As the transpacific continues to hold the global spotlight as moments of military, cultural, and geopolitical contentions as well as spaces of economic integration, negotiation, and resistance on national and global scales, we develop transpacificAmerican studies as the new cutting-edge in transnational American studies, global studies, and postcolonial studies.The essays collected in the volume recover the early oceanic archives to remap transpacific movements in different directions and at different moments, interrogate the colonial archives to reinvent indigenous ontologies and epistemologies,explore alternative oceanic archives to develop competing visions and forms of the transpacific. Above all, it speculates upon new directions in which transpacific American studies may pursue.Less
As part of the paradigm shift from the transatlantic to the transpacific in transnational American studies, this volume not only offers critical ways in which we rethink American exceptionalism, but it also engages the critical visions represented by New American studies, Asian studies, Asian American studies, and Pacific studies. By calling attention to the “oceanic archives” and indigenous epistemologies, the volume addresses colonialism and imperialism at their roots from both sides of the colonizer and the colonized and articulates what has been central to de-colonial thinking—indigenous epistemologies and ontologies, non-Western knowledge production and dissemination. As the transpacific continues to hold the global spotlight as moments of military, cultural, and geopolitical contentions as well as spaces of economic integration, negotiation, and resistance on national and global scales, we develop transpacificAmerican studies as the new cutting-edge in transnational American studies, global studies, and postcolonial studies.The essays collected in the volume recover the early oceanic archives to remap transpacific movements in different directions and at different moments, interrogate the colonial archives to reinvent indigenous ontologies and epistemologies,explore alternative oceanic archives to develop competing visions and forms of the transpacific. Above all, it speculates upon new directions in which transpacific American studies may pursue.
Steven G. Yao
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199730339
- eISBN:
- 9780199866540
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730339.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter examines the classical Chinese poetry written by immigrants detained on Angel Island. Composed in almost total anonymity between 1910 and 1940 by largely uneducated Chinese commoners ...
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This chapter examines the classical Chinese poetry written by immigrants detained on Angel Island. Composed in almost total anonymity between 1910 and 1940 by largely uneducated Chinese commoners attempting to enter the United States, the poems carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station detention buildings have garnered attention almost exclusively for socio-historic, rather than literary or cultural, reasons. As a corrective to such a tendency, this chapter shows how, coinciding in an almost uncanny way with the period of traditional Anglo-American high modernism, these works at once arise from and reflect an altogether different, and still largely unremarked, dimension of the internationalism shaping “American” culture at the time. More specifically, through their very distance from canonical works of “mainstream” English-language modernism, the “Island” poems dramatize a traumatic encounter with modernity by Chinese commoners that issues in a painful discovery of the social condition of ethnicity in the United States. In doing so, they embody an expressly international version of Asian American literary production, one that bespeaks the need to develop a more complex conception of both “American” and, more particularly, “Asian American” culture that cuts across the boundaries not only between nations but also between languages.Less
This chapter examines the classical Chinese poetry written by immigrants detained on Angel Island. Composed in almost total anonymity between 1910 and 1940 by largely uneducated Chinese commoners attempting to enter the United States, the poems carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station detention buildings have garnered attention almost exclusively for socio-historic, rather than literary or cultural, reasons. As a corrective to such a tendency, this chapter shows how, coinciding in an almost uncanny way with the period of traditional Anglo-American high modernism, these works at once arise from and reflect an altogether different, and still largely unremarked, dimension of the internationalism shaping “American” culture at the time. More specifically, through their very distance from canonical works of “mainstream” English-language modernism, the “Island” poems dramatize a traumatic encounter with modernity by Chinese commoners that issues in a painful discovery of the social condition of ethnicity in the United States. In doing so, they embody an expressly international version of Asian American literary production, one that bespeaks the need to develop a more complex conception of both “American” and, more particularly, “Asian American” culture that cuts across the boundaries not only between nations but also between languages.
Jonathan Stalling
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823231447
- eISBN:
- 9780823241835
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823231447.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This book uncovers an important untold history by tracing the historically specific, intertextual pathways of a single, if polyvalent, philosophical term, emptiness, as it is transformed within ...
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This book uncovers an important untold history by tracing the historically specific, intertextual pathways of a single, if polyvalent, philosophical term, emptiness, as it is transformed within twentieth-century American poetry and poetics. This conceptual migration is detailed in two sections. The first focuses on “transpacific Buddhist poetics,” while the second maps the less well-known terrain of “transpacific Daoist poetics.” In Chapters 1 and 2, the text explores Ernest Fenollosa's “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry” as an expression of Fenollosa's distinctly Buddhist poetics informed by a two-decade-long encounter with a culturally hybrid form of Buddhism known as Shin Bukkyo (“New Buddhism”). Chapter 2 explores the classical Chinese poetics that undergirds the lost half of Fenellosa's essay. Chapter 3 concludes the first half of the book with an exploration of the didactic and soteriological function of “emptiness” in Gary Snyder's influential poetry and poetics. The second half begins with a critical exploration of the three-decades-long career of the poet/translator/critic Wai-lim Yip, whose “transpacific Daoist poetics” has been an important fixture in American poetic late modernism and has begun to gain wider notoriety in China. The last chapter engages the intertextual weave of poststructural thought and Daoist and shamanistic discourses in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's important body of heterocultural productions. By formulating interpretive frames as hybrid as the texts being read, this book makes available one of the most important yet still largely unknown stories of American poetry and poetics.Less
This book uncovers an important untold history by tracing the historically specific, intertextual pathways of a single, if polyvalent, philosophical term, emptiness, as it is transformed within twentieth-century American poetry and poetics. This conceptual migration is detailed in two sections. The first focuses on “transpacific Buddhist poetics,” while the second maps the less well-known terrain of “transpacific Daoist poetics.” In Chapters 1 and 2, the text explores Ernest Fenollosa's “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry” as an expression of Fenollosa's distinctly Buddhist poetics informed by a two-decade-long encounter with a culturally hybrid form of Buddhism known as Shin Bukkyo (“New Buddhism”). Chapter 2 explores the classical Chinese poetics that undergirds the lost half of Fenellosa's essay. Chapter 3 concludes the first half of the book with an exploration of the didactic and soteriological function of “emptiness” in Gary Snyder's influential poetry and poetics. The second half begins with a critical exploration of the three-decades-long career of the poet/translator/critic Wai-lim Yip, whose “transpacific Daoist poetics” has been an important fixture in American poetic late modernism and has begun to gain wider notoriety in China. The last chapter engages the intertextual weave of poststructural thought and Daoist and shamanistic discourses in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's important body of heterocultural productions. By formulating interpretive frames as hybrid as the texts being read, this book makes available one of the most important yet still largely unknown stories of American poetry and poetics.
Yasuko Takezawa and Gary Y. Okihiro (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824847586
- eISBN:
- 9780824873066
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824847586.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Begun as a conversation among scholars of Japanese American studies in Japan and the United States, Transpacific Japanese American Studies is conceived of as an engagement across national archives, ...
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Begun as a conversation among scholars of Japanese American studies in Japan and the United States, Transpacific Japanese American Studies is conceived of as an engagement across national archives, literatures, and subject positions to excavate personal investments, epistemologies, and social contexts. Is it possible to achieve a truly equal exchange in a field that defines itself as “Japanese American” studies and in a conversation conducted mainly in the English language? All of the contributors to this volume were asked to consider those foundational questions, and most discussed their subjectivities and work over the course of several years in meetings held in Japan and the US. The outcome, Transpacific Japanese American Studies, is a candid, self-conscious appraisal of scholars and their subject positions and personal and political investments.Less
Begun as a conversation among scholars of Japanese American studies in Japan and the United States, Transpacific Japanese American Studies is conceived of as an engagement across national archives, literatures, and subject positions to excavate personal investments, epistemologies, and social contexts. Is it possible to achieve a truly equal exchange in a field that defines itself as “Japanese American” studies and in a conversation conducted mainly in the English language? All of the contributors to this volume were asked to consider those foundational questions, and most discussed their subjectivities and work over the course of several years in meetings held in Japan and the US. The outcome, Transpacific Japanese American Studies, is a candid, self-conscious appraisal of scholars and their subject positions and personal and political investments.
Christopher B. Patterson
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781479802043
- eISBN:
- 9781479886029
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479802043.003.0009
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
The coda briefly reiterates the book’s two main arguments: (1) that games train us as citizens of the open world empire to quantify, to tabulate, to enjoy certainty, and to be well adjusted to ...
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The coda briefly reiterates the book’s two main arguments: (1) that games train us as citizens of the open world empire to quantify, to tabulate, to enjoy certainty, and to be well adjusted to violence, and (2) that the playful anarchy and erotic interactions within video games tease us, test our ethical boundaries, and help us understand how our pleasures relate to imperial violence and transpacific colonial histories. The coda supplements these themes by exploring how digital games help realize the violences of empire by wedding forms of technological domination with artistic practice, combining the scientific with the aesthetic, the logical with the obscure, and the procedural with the anarchic. Through the media theories of Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Eve Sedgwick, the coda argues that interactive media’s greatest potential is in offering the virtual as a space of eros and play, where gamers can derive queer intimacy and erotic pleasure from a seemingly cold and scientific apparatus.Less
The coda briefly reiterates the book’s two main arguments: (1) that games train us as citizens of the open world empire to quantify, to tabulate, to enjoy certainty, and to be well adjusted to violence, and (2) that the playful anarchy and erotic interactions within video games tease us, test our ethical boundaries, and help us understand how our pleasures relate to imperial violence and transpacific colonial histories. The coda supplements these themes by exploring how digital games help realize the violences of empire by wedding forms of technological domination with artistic practice, combining the scientific with the aesthetic, the logical with the obscure, and the procedural with the anarchic. Through the media theories of Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Eve Sedgwick, the coda argues that interactive media’s greatest potential is in offering the virtual as a space of eros and play, where gamers can derive queer intimacy and erotic pleasure from a seemingly cold and scientific apparatus.
Janet Hoskins and Viet Thanh Nguyen (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824839949
- eISBN:
- 9780824868574
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824839949.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Pacific Studies
The Pacific has long been a space of conquest, exploration, fantasy, and resistance. Pacific Islanders had established civilizations and cultures of travel well before European explorers arrived, ...
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The Pacific has long been a space of conquest, exploration, fantasy, and resistance. Pacific Islanders had established civilizations and cultures of travel well before European explorers arrived, initiating centuries of upheaval and transformation. The twentieth century, with wars fought in and over the Pacific, is only the most recent era to witness military strife and economic competition. Recognizing the increasing importance of the transpacific as a word and concept, this anthology proposes a framework for transpacific studies that examines the flows of culture, capital, ideas, and labor across the Pacific, from Asia to the Americas, and the Pacific Islands. The introduction considers the advantages and limitations of models found in Asian studies, American studies, and Asian American studies for dealing with these flows. The editors argue that Transpacific Studies can draw from all three in order to provide a critical model for considering the geopolitical struggle over the Pacific, with possibilities for inequality and exploitation. Transpacific Studies sheds light on the cultural and political movements, artistic works, and ideas that have arisen to contest state, corporate, and military ambitions. The Transpacific as a concept illuminates how flows across the Pacific can be harnessed for purposes of both domination and resistance.Less
The Pacific has long been a space of conquest, exploration, fantasy, and resistance. Pacific Islanders had established civilizations and cultures of travel well before European explorers arrived, initiating centuries of upheaval and transformation. The twentieth century, with wars fought in and over the Pacific, is only the most recent era to witness military strife and economic competition. Recognizing the increasing importance of the transpacific as a word and concept, this anthology proposes a framework for transpacific studies that examines the flows of culture, capital, ideas, and labor across the Pacific, from Asia to the Americas, and the Pacific Islands. The introduction considers the advantages and limitations of models found in Asian studies, American studies, and Asian American studies for dealing with these flows. The editors argue that Transpacific Studies can draw from all three in order to provide a critical model for considering the geopolitical struggle over the Pacific, with possibilities for inequality and exploitation. Transpacific Studies sheds light on the cultural and political movements, artistic works, and ideas that have arisen to contest state, corporate, and military ambitions. The Transpacific as a concept illuminates how flows across the Pacific can be harnessed for purposes of both domination and resistance.
Meredith Oda
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226592602
- eISBN:
- 9780226592886
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226592886.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In the decades following World War II, municipal leaders and ordinary citizens embraced San Francisco’s identity as the “Gateway to the Pacific” and used it to reimagine and rebuild their city. ...
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In the decades following World War II, municipal leaders and ordinary citizens embraced San Francisco’s identity as the “Gateway to the Pacific” and used it to reimagine and rebuild their city. Together, they forged San Francisco into a cosmopolitan center celebratory of its Japanese and other Asian American residents, its economy linked with Asia, and its favorable location for transpacific partnerships. The most conspicuous testament to San Francisco’s postwar “Gateway to the Pacific” identity is the Japanese Cultural and Trade Center in the city’s redeveloped Japanese-American enclave. The development of the Japanese Center was a multilayered story embedded in transforming transpacific institutions and ideas. During these formative decades, San Francisco’s relations with and ideas about Japan were forged within the intimate, local sites of civic and community life. With tools including Cold War People-to-People programs, community organizing, and urban redevelopment initiatives, a range of San Franciscans (often with conflicting goals) reshaped their city’s civic identity, institutions, and built environment into one embracing of Asian and especially Japanese Americans and naturally linked with Japan. These newly friendly transpacific relations meant that Japanese Americans found fresh, if highly constrained, job and community prospects just as the city’s African Americans struggled against rising barriers. San Francisco’s story is an inherently local one, but it also a broader story of a city collectively, if not cooperatively, reimagining its place in a global economy through the manageable and familiar places of home, neighborhood, and community.Less
In the decades following World War II, municipal leaders and ordinary citizens embraced San Francisco’s identity as the “Gateway to the Pacific” and used it to reimagine and rebuild their city. Together, they forged San Francisco into a cosmopolitan center celebratory of its Japanese and other Asian American residents, its economy linked with Asia, and its favorable location for transpacific partnerships. The most conspicuous testament to San Francisco’s postwar “Gateway to the Pacific” identity is the Japanese Cultural and Trade Center in the city’s redeveloped Japanese-American enclave. The development of the Japanese Center was a multilayered story embedded in transforming transpacific institutions and ideas. During these formative decades, San Francisco’s relations with and ideas about Japan were forged within the intimate, local sites of civic and community life. With tools including Cold War People-to-People programs, community organizing, and urban redevelopment initiatives, a range of San Franciscans (often with conflicting goals) reshaped their city’s civic identity, institutions, and built environment into one embracing of Asian and especially Japanese Americans and naturally linked with Japan. These newly friendly transpacific relations meant that Japanese Americans found fresh, if highly constrained, job and community prospects just as the city’s African Americans struggled against rising barriers. San Francisco’s story is an inherently local one, but it also a broader story of a city collectively, if not cooperatively, reimagining its place in a global economy through the manageable and familiar places of home, neighborhood, and community.
Graeme B. Dinwoodie and Rochelle C. Dreyfuss
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195304619
- eISBN:
- 9780199933273
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195304619.003.0006
- Subject:
- Law, Intellectual Property, IT, and Media Law, Private International Law
International intellectual property lawmaking since TRIPS has involved many different actors, in many different fora, under a variety of conditions, leading to the phenomenon of fragmentation. This ...
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International intellectual property lawmaking since TRIPS has involved many different actors, in many different fora, under a variety of conditions, leading to the phenomenon of fragmentation. This Chapter discusses many of these lawmaking initiatives (such as bilateral free trade agreements, ACTA, the Transpacific Partnership Agreement, WIPO Development Agenda, and soft law instruments). It addresses both efforts at further commodification and the promulgation of counternorms that clarify the space where TRIPS does not require commodification. The Chapter develops a framework for integrating these developments into the WTO regime and thus gaining the benefits of regulatory competition while minimizing the costs of fragmentation. It rejects the approach of aggressive integration suggested by the International Law Commission; TRIPS offers ample opportunities for norm-integration-through-interpretation. The weight to be given to materials drawn from outside the WTO should reflect the source and timing of the instrument, governance issues, and the relationship between the coverage of the instrument and that of TRIPS. The WTO can also reduce fragmentation through its lawmaking activities, including deliberations in the Council for TRIPS. Treating other specialised institutions (eg the WHO) as partners in the international system might facilitate regulatory cooperation, and the Chapter thus suggests procedural mechanisms to take advantage of that expertise.Less
International intellectual property lawmaking since TRIPS has involved many different actors, in many different fora, under a variety of conditions, leading to the phenomenon of fragmentation. This Chapter discusses many of these lawmaking initiatives (such as bilateral free trade agreements, ACTA, the Transpacific Partnership Agreement, WIPO Development Agenda, and soft law instruments). It addresses both efforts at further commodification and the promulgation of counternorms that clarify the space where TRIPS does not require commodification. The Chapter develops a framework for integrating these developments into the WTO regime and thus gaining the benefits of regulatory competition while minimizing the costs of fragmentation. It rejects the approach of aggressive integration suggested by the International Law Commission; TRIPS offers ample opportunities for norm-integration-through-interpretation. The weight to be given to materials drawn from outside the WTO should reflect the source and timing of the instrument, governance issues, and the relationship between the coverage of the instrument and that of TRIPS. The WTO can also reduce fragmentation through its lawmaking activities, including deliberations in the Council for TRIPS. Treating other specialised institutions (eg the WHO) as partners in the international system might facilitate regulatory cooperation, and the Chapter thus suggests procedural mechanisms to take advantage of that expertise.
Jane H. Hong
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781469653365
- eISBN:
- 9781469653389
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469653365.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Over the course of less than a century, the U.S. transformed from a nation that excluded Asians from immigration and citizenship to one that receives more immigrants from Asia than from anywhere else ...
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Over the course of less than a century, the U.S. transformed from a nation that excluded Asians from immigration and citizenship to one that receives more immigrants from Asia than from anywhere else in the world. Yet questions of how that dramatic shift took place have long gone unanswered. In this first comprehensive history of Asian exclusion repeal, Jane H. Hong unearths the transpacific movement that successfully ended restrictions on Asian immigration.
The mid-twentieth century repeal of Asian exclusion, Hong shows, was part of the price of America’s postwar empire in Asia. The demands of U.S. empire-building during an era of decolonization created new opportunities for advocates from both the U.S. and Asia to lobby U.S. Congress for repeal. Drawing from sources in the United States, India, and the Philippines, Opening the Gates to Asia charts a movement more than twenty years in the making. Positioning repeal at the intersection of U.S. civil rights struggles and Asian decolonization, Hong raises thorny questions about the meanings of nation, independence, and citizenship on the global stage.Less
Over the course of less than a century, the U.S. transformed from a nation that excluded Asians from immigration and citizenship to one that receives more immigrants from Asia than from anywhere else in the world. Yet questions of how that dramatic shift took place have long gone unanswered. In this first comprehensive history of Asian exclusion repeal, Jane H. Hong unearths the transpacific movement that successfully ended restrictions on Asian immigration.
The mid-twentieth century repeal of Asian exclusion, Hong shows, was part of the price of America’s postwar empire in Asia. The demands of U.S. empire-building during an era of decolonization created new opportunities for advocates from both the U.S. and Asia to lobby U.S. Congress for repeal. Drawing from sources in the United States, India, and the Philippines, Opening the Gates to Asia charts a movement more than twenty years in the making. Positioning repeal at the intersection of U.S. civil rights struggles and Asian decolonization, Hong raises thorny questions about the meanings of nation, independence, and citizenship on the global stage.
Takayuki Tatsumi
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496811523
- eISBN:
- 9781496811561
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496811523.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Takayuki Tatsumi, in “Race and Black Humor: From a Planetary Perspective,” uses the literary concept of black humor to frame his discussion of race and humanity on a global scale. Starting with a ...
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Takayuki Tatsumi, in “Race and Black Humor: From a Planetary Perspective,” uses the literary concept of black humor to frame his discussion of race and humanity on a global scale. Starting with a racist joke concerning Hurricane Katrina, Tatsumi traces a conspiracy theory that blames this weather event on the Japanese Yakuza to develop his multi-ethnic literary analysis. From this point, Tatsumi focuses on Brian Aldiss’s short story “Another Little Boy” (1966) and how the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki transmute debates on white supremacy, counter-racism, nationalism, technology, and global racial metaphors. In his closing argument, black humor is brought to bear on Japanese-American relations as Tatsumi considers transpacific writers and transpacific imagination.Less
Takayuki Tatsumi, in “Race and Black Humor: From a Planetary Perspective,” uses the literary concept of black humor to frame his discussion of race and humanity on a global scale. Starting with a racist joke concerning Hurricane Katrina, Tatsumi traces a conspiracy theory that blames this weather event on the Japanese Yakuza to develop his multi-ethnic literary analysis. From this point, Tatsumi focuses on Brian Aldiss’s short story “Another Little Boy” (1966) and how the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki transmute debates on white supremacy, counter-racism, nationalism, technology, and global racial metaphors. In his closing argument, black humor is brought to bear on Japanese-American relations as Tatsumi considers transpacific writers and transpacific imagination.
David O. McKay
Reid L. Neilson and Carson V. Teuscher (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042850
- eISBN:
- 9780252051715
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042850.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Departing from Utah, David O. McKay and Hugh J. Cannon began their year-long fact-finding mission on December 4, 1920, traveling northwest by railroad to the deepwater port of Vancouver, Canada. The ...
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Departing from Utah, David O. McKay and Hugh J. Cannon began their year-long fact-finding mission on December 4, 1920, traveling northwest by railroad to the deepwater port of Vancouver, Canada. The two made a stop in the Pacific Northwest to visit church leaders and missionaries serving in Portland and Seattle. Arriving in Vancouver, McKay and Cannon boarded their steamship and spent two weeks at sea. Their journey to Japan was tempestuous at times; McKay tried to relate his ongoing struggle with seasickness in good humor, thinly disguising his discomfort on the high seas. Steamship travel became a staple of their journey; over the following year, McKay and Cannon recorded a travel distance of 37,819 miles by sea—well eclipsing the pair’s mileage by land.Less
Departing from Utah, David O. McKay and Hugh J. Cannon began their year-long fact-finding mission on December 4, 1920, traveling northwest by railroad to the deepwater port of Vancouver, Canada. The two made a stop in the Pacific Northwest to visit church leaders and missionaries serving in Portland and Seattle. Arriving in Vancouver, McKay and Cannon boarded their steamship and spent two weeks at sea. Their journey to Japan was tempestuous at times; McKay tried to relate his ongoing struggle with seasickness in good humor, thinly disguising his discomfort on the high seas. Steamship travel became a staple of their journey; over the following year, McKay and Cannon recorded a travel distance of 37,819 miles by sea—well eclipsing the pair’s mileage by land.
David O. McKay
Reid L. Neilson and Carson V. Teuscher (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042850
- eISBN:
- 9780252051715
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042850.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Returning to Japan, McKay and Cannon prepared for their final seventeen days in the Orient. They passed through Nagasaki, Kobe, Kyoto, and Sapporo before finally arriving in Yokohama. Amid their ...
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Returning to Japan, McKay and Cannon prepared for their final seventeen days in the Orient. They passed through Nagasaki, Kobe, Kyoto, and Sapporo before finally arriving in Yokohama. Amid their responsibilities of making recommendations for the improvement of the island’s missionary labors, navigating a change in mission leadership, and attending meetings, McKay took time to note some general observations from his inaugural foray into Asia. On January 26, McKay and Cannon again boarded the steamship Tenyo Maruru, this time bound for the Hawaiian Islands. After more than a week at sea, they arrived at Honolulu ready for the next leg of the tour.Less
Returning to Japan, McKay and Cannon prepared for their final seventeen days in the Orient. They passed through Nagasaki, Kobe, Kyoto, and Sapporo before finally arriving in Yokohama. Amid their responsibilities of making recommendations for the improvement of the island’s missionary labors, navigating a change in mission leadership, and attending meetings, McKay took time to note some general observations from his inaugural foray into Asia. On January 26, McKay and Cannon again boarded the steamship Tenyo Maruru, this time bound for the Hawaiian Islands. After more than a week at sea, they arrived at Honolulu ready for the next leg of the tour.
Rudolph J. Vecoli and Francesco Durante
Donna R. Gabaccia (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823279869
- eISBN:
- 9780823281428
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823279869.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter focuses on Celso Cesare Moreno's failed Pulau Weh project during his voyage to North America that commenced in 1868. It first considers the various reactions to Moreno's presence in ...
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This chapter focuses on Celso Cesare Moreno's failed Pulau Weh project during his voyage to North America that commenced in 1868. It first considers the various reactions to Moreno's presence in America before discussing his efforts to sell Pulau Weh, an island off the northeast coast of Sumatra for which he claimed ownership, to the U.S. government. It then examines Moreno's 1869 publication of the pamphlet American Interests in Asia in which he cast Asia and most of the ethnic groups there—particularly the Chinese—in a positive light. It also describes Moreno's attempt to engage America in the economic development of China and his proposed transpacific submarine cable between America and Asia. Finally, it explains why Moreno was unable to realize his two objectives: the sale of his Pacific island or the construction of the transpacific cable.Less
This chapter focuses on Celso Cesare Moreno's failed Pulau Weh project during his voyage to North America that commenced in 1868. It first considers the various reactions to Moreno's presence in America before discussing his efforts to sell Pulau Weh, an island off the northeast coast of Sumatra for which he claimed ownership, to the U.S. government. It then examines Moreno's 1869 publication of the pamphlet American Interests in Asia in which he cast Asia and most of the ethnic groups there—particularly the Chinese—in a positive light. It also describes Moreno's attempt to engage America in the economic development of China and his proposed transpacific submarine cable between America and Asia. Finally, it explains why Moreno was unable to realize his two objectives: the sale of his Pacific island or the construction of the transpacific cable.
Chih-Ming Wang
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824836429
- eISBN:
- 9780824871055
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824836429.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter takes up the transpacific endeavor of Yung Wing—the first Chinese ever to obtain a college degree in the United States—as a point of departure to explain how study abroad reflects a ...
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This chapter takes up the transpacific endeavor of Yung Wing—the first Chinese ever to obtain a college degree in the United States—as a point of departure to explain how study abroad reflects a structure of feeling called “leaving Asia for America,” which is created in the history of Western imperialism in Asia. The act of studying abroad is here examined as a deep-seated psychic dynamic overdetermined by a colonial modernity that was hinged specifically on the imagination of transpacific movement, in which each departure and arrival was charged with complex feelings and thoughts. Tracking his transpacific career and translated life, this chapter argues that Yung Wing represents a distinctive model of Asian American intellectual whose existence and activities have a clear orientation toward Asia.Less
This chapter takes up the transpacific endeavor of Yung Wing—the first Chinese ever to obtain a college degree in the United States—as a point of departure to explain how study abroad reflects a structure of feeling called “leaving Asia for America,” which is created in the history of Western imperialism in Asia. The act of studying abroad is here examined as a deep-seated psychic dynamic overdetermined by a colonial modernity that was hinged specifically on the imagination of transpacific movement, in which each departure and arrival was charged with complex feelings and thoughts. Tracking his transpacific career and translated life, this chapter argues that Yung Wing represents a distinctive model of Asian American intellectual whose existence and activities have a clear orientation toward Asia.
Yên Lê Espiritu, Lisa Lowe, and Lisa Yoneyama
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823278602
- eISBN:
- 9780823280629
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823278602.003.0011
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
Concentrated on U.S. militarization, U.S. war-making, and militarized refugees, this chapter contemplates the multivalent entanglements and interweavings that are part and parcel of U.S. empire over ...
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Concentrated on U.S. militarization, U.S. war-making, and militarized refugees, this chapter contemplates the multivalent entanglements and interweavings that are part and parcel of U.S. empire over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Less
Concentrated on U.S. militarization, U.S. war-making, and militarized refugees, this chapter contemplates the multivalent entanglements and interweavings that are part and parcel of U.S. empire over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Elizabeth Sinn
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9789888139712
- eISBN:
- 9789888180172
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888139712.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Goods were exported to California for the consumption of the general population as well as the Chinese community, and China goods were redistributed at San Francisco to the region and to the East ...
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Goods were exported to California for the consumption of the general population as well as the Chinese community, and China goods were redistributed at San Francisco to the region and to the East Coast. An exceptional export from California was the savings of emigrants remitted to their families in China, which had an enormous impact on the economy of the sending counties in south China, and on Hong Kong, the intermediary for all these funds. Business collaboration between Hong Kong and California assumed many forms, and transpacific connections were multiple in nature, with personal, family and native place interests inextricably mixed with commercial interests. Of particular significance was the rise of the Gold Mountain Trading firms which dealt in import/ export, retail and wholesale, remittances, foreign exchange, insurance and shipping and other businesses between Hong Kong and America.Less
Goods were exported to California for the consumption of the general population as well as the Chinese community, and China goods were redistributed at San Francisco to the region and to the East Coast. An exceptional export from California was the savings of emigrants remitted to their families in China, which had an enormous impact on the economy of the sending counties in south China, and on Hong Kong, the intermediary for all these funds. Business collaboration between Hong Kong and California assumed many forms, and transpacific connections were multiple in nature, with personal, family and native place interests inextricably mixed with commercial interests. Of particular significance was the rise of the Gold Mountain Trading firms which dealt in import/ export, retail and wholesale, remittances, foreign exchange, insurance and shipping and other businesses between Hong Kong and America.
Yuan Shu
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9789888455775
- eISBN:
- 9789882204034
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888455775.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
In juxtaposing The Fifth Book of Peace with The Woman Warrior, this essay argues that Kingston has moved away from the narrative role as a native informant and presents a new multicultural United ...
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In juxtaposing The Fifth Book of Peace with The Woman Warrior, this essay argues that Kingston has moved away from the narrative role as a native informant and presents a new multicultural United States by inventing a Chinese American epistemology and intervening in US imperialism around the globe. Such a move substantiates Mignolo’s theory of “global decolonial thinking,” a critical process that reclaims non-Western notions of humanity and epistemology.Less
In juxtaposing The Fifth Book of Peace with The Woman Warrior, this essay argues that Kingston has moved away from the narrative role as a native informant and presents a new multicultural United States by inventing a Chinese American epistemology and intervening in US imperialism around the globe. Such a move substantiates Mignolo’s theory of “global decolonial thinking,” a critical process that reclaims non-Western notions of humanity and epistemology.
Yasuko Takezawa and Gary Y. Okihiro
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824847586
- eISBN:
- 9780824873066
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824847586.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
The Introduction explains how the book was generated through a series of dialogues between Japan- and US-based scholars held in Japan and the US. Those engagements highlighted what the contributors ...
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The Introduction explains how the book was generated through a series of dialogues between Japan- and US-based scholars held in Japan and the US. Those engagements highlighted what the contributors considered to be the subject matters and issues at stake in the field called “Japanese American studies.” While tracing the field’s literature and its past achievements in each country, the authors point out the field’s neglect in accounting for the subject positions, political commitments, and historical and social contexts of scholars and their consequences for their choice of subject matters and approaches to Japanese American studies. Finally, the Introduction describes the book’s structure and offers a brief summary of each chapter.Less
The Introduction explains how the book was generated through a series of dialogues between Japan- and US-based scholars held in Japan and the US. Those engagements highlighted what the contributors considered to be the subject matters and issues at stake in the field called “Japanese American studies.” While tracing the field’s literature and its past achievements in each country, the authors point out the field’s neglect in accounting for the subject positions, political commitments, and historical and social contexts of scholars and their consequences for their choice of subject matters and approaches to Japanese American studies. Finally, the Introduction describes the book’s structure and offers a brief summary of each chapter.
Rika Nakamura
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780824847586
- eISBN:
- 9780824873066
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824847586.003.0013
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter explores the possibilities of an Asian American studies which is more transpacific and inter-Asia oriented, with a specific focus on Japan and East Asia. Inviting U.S.- and Canada-based ...
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This chapter explores the possibilities of an Asian American studies which is more transpacific and inter-Asia oriented, with a specific focus on Japan and East Asia. Inviting U.S.- and Canada-based Asian Americanists to interrogate the discipline’s embedded North America-centrism in their perceptions towards Asia, this reoriented Asian American studies asks Asia-based Asian practitioners to reflect upon ethnoracial violences in our own lands, including those related to intra-Asian imperialisms and militarized violence. In this way, Asian American studies can become a place for mutual learning. The chapter underscores the usefulness of our disparate positions (however arbitrary) to look at ourselves from the perspectives of others and examine our complicities with the dominant groups rather than simply viewing ourselves in alignment with the oppressed. It is my hope that the reoriented transpacific, and inter-Asia, Asian American studies will help us expand our horizon and engage in conversations across Asia and across the Pacific.Less
This chapter explores the possibilities of an Asian American studies which is more transpacific and inter-Asia oriented, with a specific focus on Japan and East Asia. Inviting U.S.- and Canada-based Asian Americanists to interrogate the discipline’s embedded North America-centrism in their perceptions towards Asia, this reoriented Asian American studies asks Asia-based Asian practitioners to reflect upon ethnoracial violences in our own lands, including those related to intra-Asian imperialisms and militarized violence. In this way, Asian American studies can become a place for mutual learning. The chapter underscores the usefulness of our disparate positions (however arbitrary) to look at ourselves from the perspectives of others and examine our complicities with the dominant groups rather than simply viewing ourselves in alignment with the oppressed. It is my hope that the reoriented transpacific, and inter-Asia, Asian American studies will help us expand our horizon and engage in conversations across Asia and across the Pacific.
