Routledge Asian American Literature and the Environment (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)

This book is a ground-breaking transnational study of representations of the environment in Asian American literature. Extending and renewing Asian American studies and ecocriticism by drawing the two fields into deeper dialogue, it brings Asian American writers to the center of ecocritical studies. This collection demonstrates the distinctiveness of Asian American writers’ positions on topics of major concern today: environmental justice, identity and the land, war environments, consumption, urban environments, and the environment and creativity. Represented authors include Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ruth Ozeki, Ha Jin, Fae Myenne Ng, Le Ly Hayslip, Lan Cao, Mitsuye Yamada, Lawson Fusao Inada, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Milton Murayama, Don Lee, and Hisaye Yamamoto. These writers provide a range of perspectives on the historical, social, psychological, economic, philosophical, and aesthetic responses of Asian Americans to the environment conceived in relation to labor, racism, immigration, domesticity, global capitalism, relocation, pollution, violence, and religion. Contributors apply a diversity of critical frameworks, including critical radical race studies, counter-memory studies, ecofeminism, and geomantic criticism. The book presents a compelling and timely "green" perspective through which to understand key works of Asian American literature and leads the field of ecocriticism into neglected terrain. Review Through various critical lenses that bring together studies in race, gender, labor, space, immigration, and ecofeminism, these essays interrogate US exceptionalism in the reconstruction of 'frontier' in relation to Asian American experiences and challenge US neocolonialism and neoliberalism in the transnational Asia-Pacific. In so doing it breaks new ground in both environmental and Asian American studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. - Y. Shu, CHOICE Asian American Literature and the Environment is a book I have long waited to see in print. It is a groundbreaking contribution to ecocritical inquiry and Asian American literary studies and will help define the fields for years to come. -- Robert T. Hayashi, Amherst College, USA A wide-ranging and ground-breaking study that expands our understanding of Asian-American culture, environmental literature, and the connections between them. This should be required reading in ecocriticism, environmental studies, and multi-cultural studies. -- David Landis Barnhill, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, USA By collecting essays that focus on connections between environmental thought and Asian American literary productions,this book presents a new and exciting approach to two fields that have rarely been in dialogue with each other, and moves the field of Asian American studies in new directions. -- Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Arizona State University, USA About the Author Lorna Fitzsimmons is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Humanities at California State University Dominguez Hills, USA. Youngsuk Chae is Associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Pembroke, USA. Bella Adams is Lecturer in English at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.