Department of English

Yogita Goyal, "Introduction: The Transnational Turn," in the Cambridge Companion to Transnational American Literature , ed. Yogita Goyal, 1–17 (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

This article argues that biodiversity conservation is primarily a social and cultural issue and only secondarily a scientific one. It explains the proxy logic of narratives about endangered species, which typically serve as proxies for community identities and the changes communities have undergone through processes of modernization and colonization. Polar bears, whose endangerment is interpreted differently by North American and European audiences, on the one hand, and by Inuit communities, on the other, serve as an example of how endangered species narratives not only involve culture but also, more specifically, issues of multispecies justice. Conservation humanities needs to engage with the two central problems that multispecies justice has identified and grappled with: conflicts between the interests of disadvantaged human communities and nonhuman species and conflicts and trade-offs between the interests of different nonhuman species. The essay argues that adopting the framework of “multispecies justice” rather than “conservation” will help to overcome some of the impasses of interdisciplinary collaboration in environmental studies in the past.

During the twentieth century, state health authorities in California recommended sterilization for over 20,000 individuals held in state institutions. Asian immigrants occupied a marginalized position in racial, gender, and class hierarchies in California at the height of its eugenic sterilization program. Scholars have documented the disproportionate sterilization of other racialized groups, but little research exists connecting the racist, gendered implementation of Asian immigration restriction to the racism and sexism inherent in eugenics. This study examines patterns of coercive sterilization in Asian immigrants in California, hypothesizing higher institutionalization and sterilization rates among Asian-born compared with other foreign- and US-born individuals. We used complete count census microdata from 1910 to 1940 and digitized sterilization recommendation forms from 1920 to 1945 to model relative institutionalization and sterilization rates of Asian-born, other foreign-born, and US-born populations, stratified by gender. Other foreign-born men and women had the highest institutionalization rates in all four census years. Sterilization rates were higher for Asian-born women compared with US-born [Incidence Rate Ratio (IRR) = 2.00 (95% CI: 1.61, 2.48)] and other foreign-born women (p < 0.001) across the entire study period. Sterilization rates for Asian-born men were not significantly higher than those of US-born men [IRR 0.95 (95% CI 0.83, 1.10). However, an inflection point model incorporating the year of sterilization found higher sterilization rates for Asian-born men than for US-born men prior to 1933 [IRR 1.31 (95% CI 1.09, 1.59)]. This original quantitative analysis contributes to the literature demonstrating the health impact of discrimination on Asian-Americans and the disproportionate sterilization of racial minorities under state eugenics programs.

This article extends the terms of debate in Western feminism by analyzing the gender politics within Asian American cultural studies. On account of historical "emasculation" of Asian American men (exclusion laws, labor restrictions, cultural stereotyping, etc), Chinese American male writers feel the need to reassert manhood through heroic literary portrayal. I urge these writers to recover a cultural space without denigrating the "feminine" and to redefine heroism by transcending binaries.

This article interprets Kingston's China Men as "historiographic metafiction"--a revisionist novel which counters traditional historiography with an alternative mode of telling and reimagines the past to make room for a different future. Kingston's "talk story" technique allows her, by inter­ weaving oral and literary traditions and a polyphonic multiplicity of narratives, to fracture and subvert both Chinese patriarchal and white American authority. Like Foucault's genealogy, talk-story · thus "fragments what was thought unified" by decentering, disseminating and interrogating authority. But Kingston embellishes historical data and received myths with imagined details; she mixes fact and fantasy to herald a world grounded in reciprocity rather than domination.

This article combines legal, sociological, and literary scholarship. Taking the lead from scholars of Critical Race Theory who have shown how African Americans and Korean Americans were positioned agonistically in People v. Soon Ja Du and in the media accounts about the LA uprising, I submit that “The Court Interpreter” by Ty Pak at once impugns and underwrites the oppositional racial identities dictated by the “master narrative.” Part III opens with Cheung’s interracial analysis of what she describes as “(mis)interpretations and (in)justice” during the 1992 Los Angeles “Riots” and “Black-Korean Conflict” (2005). Here, Cheung draws on fictional and legal material where racial issues are interpreted and misinterpreted within the context of a highly charged racialized climate in 1992 on the heels of the verdict that exonerated four white policemen captured on video as brutally beating Rodney King.