Transpacific Imaginations

by Huang, Yunte

• ISBN13: 9780674026377
• ISBN10: 0674026373
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-02-28
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Transpacific Imaginations is a study of how American literature is enmeshed with the literatures of Asia. The book begins with Western encounters with the Pacific: Yunte Huang reads Moby Dick as a Pacific work, looks at Henry Adams's not talking about his travels in Japan and the Pacific basin in his autobiography, and compares Mark Twain to Liang Qichao. Huang then turns to Asian American encounters with the Pacific, concentrating on the "Angel Island" poems and on works by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Araki Yasusada. Huang's argument that the Pacific forms American literature more than is generally acknowledged is a major contribution to our understanding of literary history. The book is in dialogue with cross-cultural studies of the Pacific and with contemporary innovative poetics. Huang has found a vehicle to join Asians and Westerners at the deepest level, and that vehicle is poetry. Poets can best imagine an ethical ground upon which different people join hands. Huang asks us to contribute to this effort by understanding the poets and writers already in the process of linking diverse peoples.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: The Transpacific as a Critical Space	p. 1
History: And the Views from the Shores	p. 11
Mark Twain: Letters from Hawaii	p. 13
Henry Adams: In Japan and the South Seas	p. 22
Liang Qichao: A Journey to the New Continent	p. 40
Literature: Moby-Dick in the Pacific	p. 51
Collecting in the Pacific	p. 55
Ahab's Collectibles: The White Whale and the Yellow Tigers	p. 61
Ishmael, a Pacific Historian	p. 72
Queequeg, the Pacific Man	p. 82
Melville's Pacific Becoming: Fancy, Fate, Finis	p. 87
Counterpoetics: Islands, Legends, Maps	p. 99
The Poetics of Error: Angel Island	p. 101
Legends from Camp: Lawson Fusao Inada	p. 116
Mapping Histories: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha	p. 131
Conclusion: Between History and Literature-A Poetics of Acknowledgment	p. 143
Notes	p. 159
Index	p. 179
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.