Diasporic Interventions in the Work of SKY Lee, Joy Kogawa, Hiromi Goto, and Fred Wah
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University of Alberta Asian Canadian Literature: Diasporic Interventions in the Work of SKY Lee, Joy Kogawa, Hiromi Goto, and Fred Wah Guy Pierre Beau regard O A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Edmonton, Alberta Spring 2000 National Library Bibliothèque nationale 1*1 ofCanada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaON KlAON4 OüawON KtAON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distri'bute or sell reproduire7prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la fome de microfiche/.film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownenbip of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Abstract This dissertation argues that liierary texts by SKY Lee, Joy Kogawa, Hiromi Goto, and Fred Wah function as diasporic interventions in the ongoing process of remembering a "racist past" in order to secure or contest a "multicultural presentnin Canada. It draws on the complementary insights of diaspora theory. Asian American cultural criticisrn. and Canadian literary criticism in order to question representations of race and racism in the critical record surrounding these four writers and, mare generally, in certain existing models of Canadian multicultural literary criticism. The dissertation reads texts by Lee, Kogawa, Goto, and Wah under the rubric Asian Canadian Merature, which functions not as a stable marker of identity but rather as a historically specific marker of panethnic coalitional politics dating from the 1970s. Reading these texts as Asian Canadian literature enables one to track their distinct yet complementary attempts to address the impact of histories of exclusion on subjects vafiously racialized as "Asian" in Canada. Their diasporic interventions in the process of remembering these histories foreground the historical and ongoing effects of racialization and racist exclusion. This dissertation accordingly discusses literary representations of the history of Chinese immigration to Canada. the internment of Japanese Canadians, and the etfects of racialization on diasporic subjects living on the prairies and in the interior of British Columbia. These literary representations do not function as simple correctives to an inaccurate or incomplete existing historical record. They instead intewene in the cultural politics of the ongoing process of remernbering histories of anti-Asian racism in Canada. This dissertation suggests that the critical record surrounding the literary representations put foward by these four writers-and. by extension. other existing critical attempts to discuss ucultural difference" in Canadian literature-has to date addressed the history of anti-Asian racisrn in Canada in an uneven rnanner. The diasporic interventions addressed in this dissertation require literary critics to rethink the role of race and racism in this critical record and in certain existing forms of Canadian rnuiticultutaf Iiterary criticism. Acknowledgements My first thanks go to my supeivisory committee for their support during the process of wnting this dissertation. I'd especially like to thank Stephen Slemon, whose intellectual engagement and marvellous sense of curiosity have propelled this project forward and showed me, with great generosity, the benefts of participating in an extended acadernic exchange. Many people have read and cornmented upon previous drafts of this manuscript. For their help and insight. I'd like to thank Margery Fee, Donald Goellnicht. Tseen Khoo, Kyo Maclear, Joel Martineau, Mari Sasano, Joanne Saul, Caroline Sin, and Heather Smyth. Over the past four years, 1 have presented parts of this dissertation at a number of panels and conferences, including: Immigrant Literature, a panel at the Central New York Conference on Language and Literature, SUNY Cortland, 15 October 1995; Culture and Continuity on the Pacific Rim, an ASPAC conference, University of Alberta. 22 June 1996; Asian-Canadian Wntng, an ACCUTE panel, Mernorial University of Newfoundland, 1 June 1997; Commonwealth in Canada, a CACLALS conference, Wilfrid Laurier University, 8 Novernber 1997; Diversity, Wriing, and Social Critique, University of British Columbia, 25 April 1998; The Migrating Subject, a joint ACCUTE and CACLALS panel, University of Ottawa, 28 May 1998; Asian Canadian Literature and Its Theoretical Crossroads, an AAAS panel, Philadelphia, 1 April 1999; and Canadian Fictions, an ACCUTE panel. Université de Sherbrooke, 3 June 1999. Audience members at ail these events graciously listened to my work, and I have greatly benefitted from their questions and responses. I would also like to thank my students at the University of Alberta and the University of Guelph, who have helped shape the ways I think about Asian Canadian literature and why it might matter. Joy Kogawa. Fred Wah, and Roy Miki kindly granted permission to reproduce some of their poems in this dissertation, while Hiromi Goto generously passed along some work that had not yet appeared in pn'nt. Likewise, Heather Zwicker, Apollo Amoko, and Donald Goellnicht passed along important critical work in progress that substantialty adds to the critical record surrounding the texts I discuss. These acts of generosity helped make this dissertation better than what it might otherwise have been. Financial support from the University of Alberta and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada enabled me to complete this project and is gratefully acknowledged. Table of Contents Introduction: Diasporic Interventions 1 Chapter One: Asian Canadian Immigrant Acts 63 Chapter Two: Joy Kogawa's Critical Nationalism 98 Chapter Three: Hiromi Goto and the Politics of Writing Back 143 Chapter Four: Fred Wah Moving Through the Hyphen 176 Conclusion 220 Works Cited 230 Introduction: Diasporic Interventions Canada is in the midst of a profound demographic change. A 1997 Time magazine article announces that "for the first time in Canadian history, census figures show that the country's European-bom immigrants are outnumbered by those bom elsewhere-largely in Asia" (Spaeth 31). Utilizing crude yet persistent categories, an accompanying line graph entitled "East vs. West" charts the fall of "Europe" and the rise of "Asianin the percentage of immigrants to Canada (Spaeth 34). The Time magazine article celebrates this change in the constituency of "Canada" through a triumphalist account of Pacific Rim capitalism. In this account. Vancouver "has always faced across the Pacific. toward Asia's faraway and profitable din" (Spaeth 34); with the arrivai of recent Asian immigrants, Vancouver has become "Asia's newest capital city, a vibrant gemstone in the coronet of dynamism that encircles the Pacific Rim" (Spaeth 30). As the Themagazine article makes clear, new economic and demographic formations are changing long-held notions of Vancouver and Canada. Yet behind the triumphalist rhetoric so characteristic of business news lies a long historydating from the 1850s to the present-of exploitation and exclusion, perseverance and resistance. This dissertation investigates the reworking and rethinking of this history in Asian Canadian literary texts by SKY 1 Lee, Joy Kogawa, Hiromi Goto, and Fred Wah. I have chosen these texts because each one offers distinct yet complementary ways of rethinking the impact of histories of exclusion on subjects variously racialized as "Asian" in Canada. This dissertation accordingly focuses on literary representations of Chinese immigration to Canada, the intemrnent of Japanese Canadians. and the effects of racialkation on diasporic subjects living on the prairies or in the interior of British Columbia. These literary representations do not function as simple correctives to an inaccurate or incomplete existing historical record. Instead, I argue that these representations intervene in the cultural politics of the process of remembering histories of anti-Asian racism in Canada. The principle argument of this dissertation is that literary texts by Lee, Kogawa, Goto. and Wah function as diasporic interventions in the ongoing process of remembering a "racist past" in order to secure or contest a "multicultural present" in Canada. Diasponc interventions consist of diverse attempts to represent histories of displacement and conditions of attempted and actual exclusion in Canada. These interventions are diasporic to the extent that they entai1 identifying with a dispersed collectivity linked by a distant homeland. Yet these interventions are also infomed by various commitments to challenging foms of exclusion in Canada. In this sense, diasporic interventions investigate differing forms of collective belonging in diasporas and in nations. These forms of collective belonging, which Akeel Bilgrami calls commitments of identity, are chosen neither freely nor