Slanting I Imagining We

The 1980s and 1990s are a historically crucial period in the development of Asian Canadian literature. Slanting I, Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s contextualizes and reanimates the urgency of that period, illustrates its historical specificities, and shows how the concerns of that moment—from cultural appropriation to race essentialism to shifting models of the state—continue to resonate for contemporary discussions of race and literature in Canada. Larissa Lai takes up the term “Asian Canadian” as a term of emergence, in the sense that it is constantly produced differently, and always in relation to other terms—often “whiteness” but also Indigeneity, queerness, feminism, African Canadian, and Asian American. In the 1980s and 1990s, “Asian Canadian” erupted in conjunction with the post-structural recognition of the instability of the subject. But paradoxically it also came into being through activist work, and so depended on an imagined stability that never fully materialized. Slanting I, Imagining We interrogates this fraught tension and the relational nature of the term through a range of texts and events, including the Gold Mountain Blues scandal, the conference Writing Thru Race, and the self-writings of Evelyn Lau and Wayson Choy.

An evocative novel that links the lives of a ninth-century poet/nun and a contemporary Asian-American woman.

Iron Goddess of Mercyby Lambda Literary Award winner Larissa Lai (for the novel The Tiger Flu) is a long poem that captures the vengeful yet hopeful movement of the Furies mid-whirl and dance with them through the horror of the long now. Inspired by the tumultuous history of Hong Kong, from the Japanese and British occupations to the ongoing pro-democracy protests, the poem interrogates the complicated notion of identity, offering a prism through which the term “Asian” can be understood to make sense of a complex set of relations. The self crystallizes in moments of solidity, only to dissolve and whirl away again. The poet is a windsock, catching all the affect that blows at her and ballooning to fullness, only to empty again when the wind changes direction. Iron Goddess of Mercy is a game of mah jong played deep into the night, an endless gamble. Presented in sixty-four fragments to honor the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, Iron Goddess of Mercy also borrows from haibun, a traditional Japanese form of travel writing in which each diary entry closes with a haiku. The poem dizzies, turns on itself. It rants, it curses, it writes love letters, but as the Iron Goddess is ever changing, so is the object of her address: a maenad, Kool-Aid, Chiang Kai-shek, the economy, a clown, freedom of speech, a brother, a bother, a typist, a monster, a machine, Iris Chang, Hannah Arendt, the Greek warrior Achilles, or a deer caught in the headlights. Finally, a balm to the poem’s devastating passion and fury, Iron Goddess of Mercy is also a type of oolong tea, a most fragrant infusion said to have been a gift from the compassionate bodhisattva Guan Yin. Summoning the ghosts of history and politics, Iron Goddess of Mercy explores the complexities of identity through the lens of rage and empowerment. This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A Simple book with few images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.

The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature presents a comprehensive history of the field, from its origins in the nineteenth century to the present day. It offers an unparalleled examination of all facets of Asian American writing that help readers to understand how authors have sought to make their experiences meaningful. Covering subjects from autobiography and Japanese American internment literature to contemporary drama and social protest performance, this History traces the development of a literary tradition while remaining grounded in current scholarship. It also presents new critical approaches to Asian American literature that will serve the needs of students and specialists alike. Written by leading scholars in the field, The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature will not only engage readers in contemporary debates but also serve as a definitive reference for years to come.

Becoming Global Asia centers Singapore as a crucial site for comprehending the uneven effects of colonialism and capitalism. In the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Singapore transformed its reputation as a culturally sterile and punitive nation to "Global Asia"-an alluring location ideal for economic flourishing. Cheryl Narumi Naruse analyzes how Singapore gained cultural capital and soft power by examining genres such as literary anthologies, demographic compilations, coming-of-career narratives, and princess fantasies. Tracing the trajectory of Singapore's positioning as Global Asia, Naruse reveals how the country emerged as a celebrated postcolonial model nation and a site of imperial desire that enables subjugation of the so-called Third World. Her readings of Global Asia as an invention of postcolonial capitalism offer new conceptual paradigms for understanding postcolonialism, neoliberalism, and empire. "Cheryl Narumi Naruse offers a lucid, much-needed theorization of postcolonial capitalism-a mode of sovereignty simultaneously forged against empire and productive of neoliberal governance. An important and original contribution to debates around Global Asia and its cultural forms, with ramifications far beyond Singapore."- JINI KIM WATSON, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, New York University "After Becoming Global Asia, criticism about cultural geopolitics and literary studies that disregards Singapore, or does not center Naruse's cogent analysis on the aesthetics of postcolonial capitalism, will be incomplete." - MOHAN AMBIKAIPAKER, author of Political Blackness in Multiracial Britain "If you've ever wondered about the dark side of the idea of 'Global Asia,' read this book. And if you are looking for evidence that literature can be more than a mere tool of the state and capital, this book is also for you." - COLLEEN LYE, author of America's Asia: Racial Form and American Literature, 1893-1945"

Canada did not fight in the Vietnam War, but the conflict seized the Canadian imagination with an energy that has persisted. In War Is Here Robert McGill explains how the war contributed to a golden age for writing in Canada. As authors addressed the conflict, they helped to construct an enduring myth of Canada as liberal, hospitable, and humanitarian. For many writers, the war was one that Canadians could and should fight against, if not in person, then on the page. In this pioneering account of war-related Canadian literature McGill observes how celebrated books of the era channel Vietnam, sometimes in subtle but pervasive ways. He examines authors’ attempts to educate their readers about American imperialism and Canadian complicity, and he discusses how writers repeatedly used language evoking militarism and violence – from the figure of the United States as a rapist to the notion of Canada as a “peaceable kingdom” – in order to make Canadians feel more intensely about their country. McGill also addresses the recent spate of prize-winning Canadian novels about the war that have renewed Vietnam’s resonance in the wake of twenty-first century conflicts involving America. War Is Here vividly revisits a galvanizing time in world history and Canadian life, offering vital insights into the Vietnam War’s influence on how people think about Canada, its place in the world, and the power of the written word to make a difference.

The Routledge Introduction to Gender and Sexuality in Literature in Canada charts the evolution of gender and sexuality, as they have been represented and performed in the literatures of Canada for more than three centuries. From early colonial texts by Frances Brooke, to settler texts by Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill, to more contemporary texts by Jane Rule, Alice Munro, Joshua Whitehead, Ivan Coyote, and others, this volume will introduce readers to how gender and sexuality have been variably conceived in Canada and the work they perform across multiple genres. Calling upon recent currents of gender theory and examining the composition, structure, and history of selected literary texts—that is, the “literary sediments” that have accumulated over centuries—readers of this book will explore how those representations shift over time. By examining literature in Canada in relation to crucial cultural, political, and historical contexts, readers will better apprehend why that literature has significantly transformed and broadened to address racialized and fluid identities that continue to challenge and disrupt any stable notion of gendered and sexualized identity today.

This collection of essays focuses on the varied and complex roles that editors have played in the production of literary and scholarly texts in Canada. With contributions from a wide range of participants who have played seminal roles as editors of Canadian literatures—from nineteenth-century works to the contemporary avant-garde, from canonized texts to anthologies of so-called minority writers and the oral literatures of the First Nations—this collection is the first of its kind. Contributors offer incisive analyses of the cultural and publishing politics of editorial practices that question inherited paradigms of literary and scholarly values. They examine specific cases of editorial production as well as theoretical considerations of editing that interrogate such key issues as authorial intentionality, textual authority, historical contingencies of textual production, circumstances of publication and reception, the pedagogical uses of edited anthologies, the instrumentality of editorial projects in relation to canon formation and minoritized literatures, and the role of editors as interpreters, enablers, facilitators, and creators. Editing as Cultural Practice in Canada situates editing in the context of the growing number of collaborative projects in which Canadian scholars are engaged, which brings into relief not only those aspects of editorial work that entail collaborating, as it were, with existing texts and documents but also collaboration as a scholarly practice that perforce involves co-editing.

Essential reading for those interested in questions of justice and cultural representation, Land/Relations speaks to and moves beyond the critical junctures in the study of Canadian literatures today. In the aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and following Canada’s sesquicentennial, Land/Relations presents a collaborative effort at what Smaro Kamboureli and Larissa Lai call “counter-memory,” a collective effort to recognise “relationships that have always been”—between peoples, between humanity and other living forms, between us and the land—in an effort to avoid erasure, loss, and trauma. Twenty influential literary critics engage a variety of genres—essay, life writing, testament, polemic, poetry—to explore the ways Canadian cultural production has been shaped by social and historical relations and can be given new and various forms to decolonize the institutions associated with the creation of this country’s vision of Canadian literature.