Transcultural Intertextuality: Reading Asian North American Poetry

TRANSCULTURAL INTERTEXTUALITY: READING ASIAN NORTH AMERICAN POETRY by Xiwen Mai A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Language and Literature) in The University of Michigan 2010 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Susan Y. Najita, Chair Professor Laurence Goldstein Professor Shuen-Fu Lin Associate Professor Sarita See © Xiwen Mai 2010 To My Parents ii Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the unwavering support, encouragement, and advice of my dissertation committee. My greatest intellectual debt is to Professor Susan Najita, the chair of my committee. She has not only ushered me through every step of graduate school—from the coursework of the very first semester to the completion of this dissertation—but also challenged me to think deeply about my position as a critic. Her incisive questions and invaluable comments on every draft of my chapters have sharpened my thinking and made this project a better one. Professor Laurence Goldstein has been a thoughtful and thorough reader whose passion for both studying and writing poetry inspires me. For his generous investment in this project‘s development, I owe him more than I can say. I am also fortunate to have Professor Sarita See as a committee member. It was during her seminar on Asian American literary criticism that the thought of studying Asian North American poetry first occurred to me. Our numerous conversations ever since have always brought me a renewed sense of purpose. For her wonderful humor and energy, I will always be grateful. Professor Shuen-Fu Lin has been a great source of inspiration for me as well with his vast and profound knowledge of poetry in both English and Chinese. I thank him for his enthusiasm for this project and his insightful suggestions for my future work. Most of this dissertation was written while I was away from Ann Arbor. For my committee‘s iii understanding and willingness to help in ways that are best for me, I can never thank these professors enough. I am also indebted to several people outside the University of Michigan for their generous help during the research and writing of this dissertation. I am grateful to Professor Juliana Chang of the Santa Clara University, whose detailed comments on chapter one helped me tremendously during my revision. Professor Fred Wah, the poet I study for chapter three, has answered my numerous questions about his poetry and poetics over email in the past two years. His patient explanations about his writing, eye- opening in many ways, have proved crucial for the development of that chapter. I am also thankful to Ms. Stephanie Cannizzo of the Berkeley Art Museum. Her assistance during my research in the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Archive makes chapter four possible. I owe a debt of gratitude to several faculty members at the University of Michigan for their mentorship and guidance. In particular, I would like to thank Professors Gregg Crane, David Rolston, Adela Pinch, George Bornstein, Betty Bell, and Tobin Siebers. In addition, I know I am not alone to thank Ms. Jan Burgess of the English Department, whose remarkable efficiency and generous support have been indispensable to me over the past eight years. I cannot imagine how my graduate school experience would have been without my friends in the English department—Sumiao Li, Tamara Bhalla, Elspeth Healey, Roxana Galusca, Kumiko Kobayashi, You-Sun Crystal Chung, and Ji-Hyae Park. Their friendship has made this process of study a lot more enjoyable. Ann Arbor has become such a beloved place also because of my fellow Chinese students in the humanities and social sciences here—Liansu Meng, Lei Zhong, Xu Li, Haijing Dai, Rong Chen, Lingling iv Zhao, Meilan Zhang, Airong Luo, Xiao Chen, and Yan Long. Their commitment to the studies of literature, philosophy, sociology, education, and information science has greatly influenced and inspired me over the years. Finally, I would like to thank my wonderful family. My brother Jianning‘s home in California was such a haven for me to spend my breaks during the first two, most stressful, years of graduate school. This dissertation also belongs to Lihua, who said ―Face your fears / Live your dreams‖ with love, and our Eugene, whose belief in the importance of Mommy‘s writing moves me more than anything. My deepest gratitude is to my parents. Their love and support made it possible for me to study in Beijing first and to explore an entirely different part of the world outside China later. To them, I dedicate this dissertation. v Table of Contents Dedication ........................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii Abstract ............................................................................................................................. vii Introduction The Practice of Transcultural Intertexuality ........................................................................1 Chapter One The Home and the World: The Cosmopolitanism of Agha Shahid Ali‘s Poetry ..............21 Chapter Two ―Continental Drift‖: Kimiko Hahn‘s Translational Poetics ...............................................64 Chapter Three ―Faking it‖: Fred Wah‘s Performative Language ............................................................104 Chapter Four Theresa Hak Kyung Cha‘s Intermedia Texts: A Visual Poetry .......................................147 Conclusion ―New Directions‖ for Asian North American Poetry? ...................................................197 Works Cited .....................................................................................................................203 vi Abstract Studying Asian North American poetry since the 1960s, this dissertation defines ―transcultural intertextuality‖ as a border-crossing practice that engages with multiple histories and interweaves elements from a wide range of cultural and literary traditions. Specifically, I read four poets—Agha Shahid Ali, Kimiko Hahn, Fred Wah, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha—and argue that studying this practice expands the scope of Asian North American literary criticism, as it urges us to rethink ethnicity beyond domestic boundaries of the nation. Analyzing the poets in various intertextual relationships, this study demonstrates how poetic analysis can enhance our understanding of the transcultural impulse of Asian North American literature. This dissertation pays particular attention to these poets‘ formal strategies as ways of negotiating with dominant social discourses on national history, international relations, gender, and ethnic identities. The organization of the chapters follows a trajectory of poetic form, moving from traditional verse to experimental texts. Chapter one examines Ali‘s writing on home and the world through his deployment of traditional forms such as the ghazal, which allow for both the historical and contemporary theorizations of ―cosmopolitanism.‖ Chapter two studies Hahn‘s criticism and practice of translation in her innovative poetry by drawing upon the theories of Walter Benjamin, Gayatri Spivak, and l’écriture feminine in order to understand how her transcultural feminist poetics challenges self/other dichotomy. By invoking Jacques Derrida‘s and Judith Butler‘s vii theorization of the ―performative,‖ chapter three examines Wah‘s avant-garde, performative poetic language and shows how it interrogates the usual ways in which language works in defining racial and ethnic identity. Finally, chapter four reads Cha‘s intermedia ―visual poetry‖ in relation to art criticism and feminist film criticism of the 1970s. The chapter examines the dynamics between her aesthetic concerns and critique of imperial power in rewriting Korean and Korean American history. These poets do not merely write about exilic and diasporic experience; they foreground the very process of border-crossing through their formal and theoretical experimentation. Ethnic identity in this process reveals itself to be a dynamic concept that needs to be understood in complicated international and intercultural relations. viii Introduction The Practice of Transcultural Intertextuality This dissertation examines Asian North American poetry since the 1960s from a transcultural perspective that emphasizes the ways in which poets explore possibilities of writing across linguistic, national, and cultural borders. Specifically, I read the works of four poets—Agha Shahid Ali, Kimiko Hahn, Fred Wah, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. I study how their writings trouble and complicate the category of ―Asian North American poetry‖ with ―transcultural intertextuality,‖ a poetic practice of interweaving elements from different national and cultural traditions in ways that require comparative, border- crossing reading strategies. Through the analysis of their poetic forms, genres, language, as well as themes, this dissertation seeks to show how poetic analysis can enhance our understanding of the transcultural dimension of Asian North American literature through an emphasis on formalist interpretation. Ultimately, I argue that reading these poets can broaden the scope of Asian American literary criticism, as their transcultural intertextuality urges us to reconsider ethnicity and ethnic writing in international and intercultural relationships. “Trans-”cultural Intertextuality To unravel the

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