Asian American Radical Literature: Marxism, Revolution, and the Politics of Form Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Bradley M. Freeman, M.A. Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2014 Dissertation Committee: Martin Joseph Ponce, Advisor Ryan Jay Friedman Lynn M. Itagaki Copyright by Bradley M. Freeman 2014 Abstract My dissertation argues that Asian American writing between 1930 and 1970 contains a trenchant but overlooked tradition of radical political critique. The left-leaning Asian American writers whom I examine—Chinese American H.T. Tsiang, Filipino American Carlos Bulosan, and Japanese Americans Ayako Ishigaki and Milton Murayama—contest both economic inequalities in the U.S. and the racist, exclusionist sentiments of white working-class culture. From the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, exclusionary immigration policies nearly ended Asian immigration to the U.S. altogether. Consequently, anti-Asian racism prompted many upper-class Asian American writers, whom the critic Elaine Kim calls “ambassadors of goodwill,” to author narratives that translate traditional Asian culture for American readers, making it compatible with and congenial to American culture and values. In contrast, the texts I examine utilize Marxist critique to expose the racial divides that fracture the working class and oppress immigrant workers especially. By showing how these narratives incorporate Marxist frameworks, I build on recent scholarship on race, the proletarian novel, and the Communist left. If the proletarian genre hinges on working-class protagonists and protest, these writers differ from novelists like James T. Farrell and John Steinbeck who limit their vision of protest and revolution to the white ii working class. Ultimately, the first three chapters of my dissertation reveal how Tsiang, Bulosan, and Ishigaki imagine an international working class bent on a revolutionary end to both economic and racial oppression. My final chapter identifies a literary-historical shift in Murayama’s later proletarian novel, which no longer foresees revolutionary change as a legitimate possibility in the midst of the Cold War’s political gridlock. My project, then, argues for the prominence of radical political critique early on in Asian American literary history and shows the way in which this critique eventually gets folded into the well-known activist formations and literary traditions of the 1970s. iii Dedication For Cami iv Acknowledgments I would first like to thank Joe Ponce for helping me think this project into being. Without his instrumental guidance, encouragement, constant availability, and patience, this dissertation would not exist. What began as an unwieldy set of loosely related interests became what I hope is a coherent set of claims due to his considerable influence, generous feedback, and critical acumen. My other committee members played a pivotal role in this project as well. Ryan Friedman, who took me on as an advisee early on in graduate school, profoundly shaped the way I read, analyze, and engage literature and culture. Through detailed and incisive commentary, he deepened the scope and sharpened the claims of this project. Lynn Itagaki came on board shortly after meeting me for the first time. For that, I am very grateful. More importantly, her feedback, advice, and encouragement were integral to the completion of this dissertation. Debra Moddelmog played a central role in my academic development as well; I am so thankful for her kindness, support, and professional counsel. My fellow graduate students were immensely helpful throughout this process. I am especially grateful for Brandon Manning, Corinne Martin, Brian McAllister, and Nate Mills, who provided intellectual insight, friendship, and a lesson in stability more times than I can count. Leila Ben-Nasr and Anne Langendorfer, too, were crucial in the final stages of this project. Similarly, Isaac Anderson’s friendship and wisdom helped sustain v my sanity and therefore this project in the early stages (and even now from across state lines). In addition, I extend my heartfelt gratitude to my “fellow travelers”: Kate Horigan, Meg LeMay, Annie Mendenhall, Lizzie Nixon, Tiffany Salter, J. Brendan Shaw, Gabe Vicencio, and Blake Wilder. It would be impossible to overstate the role of Kathleen Griffin, whose institutional guidance, optimism, and bureaucratic heavy lifting make graduate life viable. I am also indebted to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and the Diversity and Identity Studies Collective at Ohio State for travel funds that enabled me to present portions of this project at the Asian American Studies Conference. I cannot even begin to express my appreciation for my family and specifically my parents, Steve and Lori Freeman, who allowed, enabled, and encouraged me to pursue English Literature and never once asked how much longer I planned to stay in school. Lastly, I thank Cami Freeman, who has done so much more than I could have ever asked of her. Through inexhaustible patience, late night conversations, critical insight, and love, she not only made this project possible but countless times gave life to it and me when I was more than ready to give up. vi Vita 2006 .......................................B.A., English Literature and Philosophy, Oregon State University 2010 .......................................M.A., English Literature, The Ohio State University 2008 to 2014 ..........................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University Publications “Threatening the ‘Good Order’: West Meets East in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat and John Updike’s Terrorist,” The Journal of Transnational American Studies 3.2 (2011): 1-22. Fields of Study Major Field: English vii Table of Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................... ii Dedication...........................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgments ...............................................................................................................v Vita ................................................................................................................................... vii Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: From Union Square to China: The Revolutionary Imaginary in H.T. Tsiang’s The Hanging on Union Square and And China Has Hands ........................................35 Chapter 2: Beyond What Is: The Politics of Hope and Anticipation in Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart................................................................................................81 Chapter 3: “The Foundation of Our House”: Eccentric Women and the Triumphant Spring in Ayako Ishigaki’s Restless Wave ................................................................132 Chapter 4: “You No Can Beat da Plantation”: Protest, Revolution, and Disillusionment in Milton Murayama’s All I Asking for Is My Body ......................................................186 Coda: Between Old and New Lefts: Asian American Radical Literature Before the Asian American Movement .................................................................................................236 Works Cited.....................................................................................................................253 viii Introduction The radical novel is one which demonstrates, either explicitly or implicitly, that its author objects to the human suffering imposed by some socio economic system and advocates that the system be fundamentally changed. Walter B. Rideout, The Radical Novel in the United States, 1900-1954 (1956) The idea of imagining otherwise captures my sense of Asian American literatures—of how they articulate the complexities of power and personhood involved in imagining and narrating relations to the nation, America, which is at the same time the same as and more than the U.S. nation-state. It evokes how they at once critique the ways of knowing forwarded in the name of ‘America,’ but also work prophetically, presaging the elsewhere. Kandice Chuh, Imagine Otherwise: On Asian Americanist Critique (2004) From its opening lines, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act reads like a propaganda tract railing against the “yellow peril.” The document begins, Whereas in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof: Therefore, Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act, and until the expiration of ten years next after the passage of this act, the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended. The notion that these workers “endanger” the territory invokes anti-Asian anxieties that would come to define the first half of the twentieth century. According to Gina Marchetti, “Rooted in the medieval fears of Genghis Khan and Mongolian invasions in Europe, the 1 yellow peril combines racist terror of alien cultures, sexual anxieties,