Asian American Literature and the Environment

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.

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, CHOICEAsian 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, USAA 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, USABy 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

• Introduction: Ecocriticism and Asian American Literature John Gamber Part 1: The Environment and Labor 1. Environmental Narratives of American Identity: Landscape and Belonging in Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men and Milton Murayama’s All I Asking for Is My Body Andrea Aebersold 2. Fae Myenne Ng’s San Francisco Chinatown as a Social Space of Legal Discrimination Wenying Xu 3. "Delving and Carving Rude Nature": An Ecocritical Reading of Don Lee's Wrack and Ruin Bella Adams Part 2: The Environment and Violence 4. Contested "Frontier" and "Pioneers" in Writings about Japanese American Concentration Camps Zhou Xiaojing 5. Tilling the Soil in the Killing Fields: Cambodian American War Memoirs Helena Grice 6. Ecological Imaginations, the Vietnam War, and Vietnamese American Literature Cathy J. Schlund-Vials 7. "Guns, Race, Meat, and Manifest Destiny": Environmental Neocolonialism and Ecofeminism in Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats Youngsuk Chae Part 3: The Environment and Philosophy 8. Hisaye Yamamoto as Radical Agrarian Sarah D. Wald 9. A Geomantic Reading of Asian Diasporic Literature Stephen L. Field 10. Environment for "A Free Life" King-Kok Cheung Afterword David Eng