Approaches to Teaching the Works of Karen Tei Yamashita
- Editors: Ruth Y. Hsu, Pamela Thoma
- Pages: 280
- Published: 2021
- ISBN: 9781603295413 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603295406 (Hardcover)
“This book will be a vital resource for teachers, students, and scholars. . . . After reading it, I am doubly inspired to teach Yamashita’s works.”
—Sue-Im Lee, Temple University
Structurally innovative and culturally expansive, the works of Karen Tei Yamashita invite readers to rethink conventional paradigms of genres and national traditions. Her novels, plays, and other texts refashion forms like the immigrant tale, the postmodern novel, magical realism, apocalyptic literature, and the picaresque and suggest new transnational, hemispheric, and global frameworks for interpreting Asian American literature.
Addressing courses in American studies, contemporary fiction, environmental humanities, and literary theory, the essays in this volume are written by undergraduate and graduate instructors from across the United States and around the globe. Part 1, “Materials,” outlines Yamashita’s novels and other texts, key works of criticism and theory, and resources for Asian American and Asian Brazilian literature and culture. Part 2, “Approaches,” provides options for exploring Yamashita’s works through teaching historical debates, outlining principles of environmental justice, mapping geographic boundaries to highlight power dynamics, and drawing personal connections to the texts. Additionally, an essay by Yamashita describes her own approaches to teaching creative writing.
Preface (ix)
PART ONE: MATERIALS
A Writer in Motion (3)
Novels: Critical Dialogue and Long-Form Fiction (7)
Plays, Memoir, Essays, Interviews, Short Stories, Translations, and Papers (20)
Selected Bibliography (31)
Contexts (36)
Essential Reference Materials (43)
Invisible Ganesh (49)
PART TWO: APPROACHES
Introduction: Pedagogical Opportunities and Challenges (59)
Histories and Interventions
“1971: Aiiieeeee! Hotel” and Asian American Literary History (65)
Palimpsestuous Historiographies of Asian American Activism in I Hotel (71)
Many Endings, Many Beginnings: Alternative Histories of I Hotel (76)
Encountering Others within Ourselves: Circle K Cycles and Ethnic Identity in Okinawa (82)
Letters to Memory in Hawai‘i: Place, History, and National Identity (87)
A Glimpse of the Global Sixties: Teaching I Hotel in China (93)
Belonging and Nonbelonging
Yamashita’s Novels and Contemporary Interethnic American Fiction (98)
Intersectionality, Comparative Racialization, and the Racial Pyramid in Tropic of Orange (104)
Through the Arc of the Theater: Yamashita Does Asian American Drama (110)
Teaching Yamashita’s Works outside the Ethnic Studies Classroom (116)
The Critical Regionalism of Tropic of Orange (122)
Brazil-Maru and Ethnic Identities in the Japanese Classroom (128)
Hospitality, Borders, and Spatial Politics in I Hotel (133)
Mapping Alternative Spaces
Tropic of Orange as Palimpsest: A Literary Cartographic Approach (138)
Tropic of Orange in a Literary Theory Course (146)
Rerouting the Road Narrative in Tropic of Orange (152)
Troubling Boundaries and Beginnings with “The Orange” (157)
Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Brazil-Maru, and Other Short Stories in a Brazilian Context (162)
Brazil-Maru and the Narrative Space of Impersonal Feelings (168)
Through the Arc of the Rain Forest and Planetary Fiction (175)
New Transnationalisms and Ecocritical Approaches
The Voice of the Globe: Narrating Globalization in Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (179)
Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Environmental Apocalypse, and Post-Soviet Allegory (186)
A Material Ecocritical Approach to Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (191)
Critical Globalization and Political Economy in Tropic of Orange (197)
Tropic of Orange and the Genre of Climate Fiction (204)
Feminist Anticolonial Science (Fiction) Studies in the Rain Forest (209)
Notes on Contributors (217)
Survey Respondents (223)
Works Cited (225)
“The collection successfully conveys how Yamashita’s writing represents a ‘dynamic force’ for readers. . . . I would certainly recommend it.”
—Bella Adams, Liverpool John Moores University
