Cities of Others: Reimagining Urban Spaces in Asian American Literature

345 Pages·2014·1.32 MB·English

by  Xiaojing Zhou

The Scott and Laurie Oki Series in Asian American Studies
The Scott and Laurie Oki Series in Asian American Studies
From a Three-Cornered World: New and Selected Poems
by James Masao Mitsui
Imprisoned Apart: The World War II Correspondence of an Issei Couple
by Louis Fiset
Storied Lives: Japanese American Students and World War II
by Gary Okihiro
Phoenix Eyes and Other Stories by Russell Charles Leong
Paper Bullets: A Fictional Autobiography by Kip Fulbeck
Born in Seattle: The Campaign for Japanese American Redress
by Robert Sadamu Shimabukuro
Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites by
Jeffery F. Burton, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W. Lord
Judgment without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II
by Tetsuden Kashima
Shopping at Giant Foods: Chinese American Supermarkets in Northern California
by Alfred Yee
Altered Lives, Enduring Community: Japanese Americans Remember Their World War II Incar-
ceration by Stephen S. Fugita and Marilyn Fernandez
Eat Everything Before You Die: A Chinaman in the Counterculture by Jeffery Paul Chan
Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature
edited by Zhou Xiaojing and Samina Najmi
Language of the Geckos and Other Stories by Gary Pak
Nisei Memories: My Parents Talk about the War Years by Paul Howard Takemoto
Growing Up Brown: Memoirs of a Bridge Generation Filipino American by Peter Jamero
Letters from the 442nd: The World War II Correspondence of a Japanese American Medic
by Minoru Masuda; edited by Hana Masuda and Dianne Bridgman
Shadows of a Fleeting World: Pictorial Photography and the Seattle Camera Club
by David F. Martin and Nicolette Bromberg
Signs of Home: The Paintings and Wartime Diary of Kamekichi Tokita
by Barbara Johns and Kamekichi Tokita
Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence: Coming Home to Hood River by Linda Tamura
A Principled Stand: The Story of Hirabayashi v. United States
by Gordon K. Hirabayashi, with James A. Hirabayashi and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi
Cities of Others: Reimagining Urban Spaces in Asian American Literature by Xiaojing Zhou
Cities of Others
Reimagining Urban Spaces in Asian American Literature
XIAOJING ZHOU
University of Washington Press
Seattle and London
This book is published with the assistance of a grant from the Scott and Laurie Oki Endowed
Fund for publications in Asian American Studies.
is book was published thanks in part to generous grants from the College of the Pacific and the
University of the Pacific.
© 2014 by the University of Washington Press
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Composed in Minion Pro, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach
18 17 16 15 14 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
University of Washington Press
www.washington.edu/uwpress
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zhou, Xiaojing, 1952–
Cities of Others : reimagining urban spaces in Asian American literature / Xiaojing Zhou.
pages cm. — (The Scott and Laurie Oki Series in Asian American Studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-295-99402-4 (hard cover : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-295-99403-1 (pbk. : acid-
free paper) 1. American literature—Asian American authors—History and criticism. 2. Public
spaces in literature. 3. Cities and towns in literature. 4. Asian Americans in literature. I. Title.
PS153.A84Z25 2015
810.9’895—dc23
2014025250
The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.∞
Excerpts from Chinatown Family reprinted with permission by Rutgers University Press.
Excerpts from Bone reprinted with permission by Donadio & Olsen, Inc. © 1993 by
Fae Myenne Ng.
Excerpts from The Chinaman Pacific & Frisco R. R. Co. reprinted with permission by Coffee
House Press. © 1988 by Frank Chin.
Excerpts from Donald Duk reprinted with permission by Coffee House Press.
© 1991 by Frank Chin.
Excerpts from What the Hell for You Left Your Heart in San Francisco reprinted with permission
by New Day Publishers. © 1987 by Bienvenido N. Santos.
Excerpts from Manhattan Music reprinted with permission by the author, Meena Alexander.
© 1997 by Meena Alexander, 1997. All rights reserved.
Excerpts from Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee, © 1995 by Chang-rae Lee, used by permission
of Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC and Granta Publications.
Excerpts from Tropic of Orange reprinted with permission from Coffee House Press.
© 1997 by Karen Tei Yamashita.
To my sisters and brother

Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Contested Urban Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1 “The Woman about Town”: Transgressing Raced and
Gendered Boundaries in Sui Sin Far’s Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2 Claiming Right to the City: Lin Yutang’s Chinatown Family . . . . . . . 57
3 “Our Inside Story” of Chinatown: Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone . . . . . . . . . 94
4 Chinatown as an Embattled Pedagogical Space:
Frank Chin’s Short Story Cycle and Donald Duk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117
5 Inhabiting the City as Exiles: Bienvenido N. Santos’s
What the Hell for You Left Your Heart in San Francisco . . . . . . . . . . 160
6 The City as a “Contact Zone”:
Meena Alexander’s Manhattan Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
7 “The Living Voice of the City”: Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker . . . 227
8 Mapping the Global City and “the Other Scene”
of Globalization: Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange . . . . . . . . . 258
Conclusion: The I-Hotel and Other Places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Notes 303
Bibliography 313
Index 329

ACknowledgments
This book grew out of the convergence of different but
interconnected lines of inquiry over the course of a decade. At various stages
of its development I have been inspired by numerous scholars and writers
whose work continues to invigorate my thinking, pushing me to explore new
areas and enabling me to discover unlikely connections. Most are named in
my citations of their writings throughout these pages. Some others, however,
whose works are not directly referred to in this book but have been crucial
to its genesis, must be acknowledged here. Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer:
Sovereign Power and Bare Life was pivotal in the early development of my
thinking about the politics of body and space. Li-Young Lee’s poems about
refugees, immigrants, and racial minorities in the city called my attention
to the possibilities of reimagining and re-representing the American city
and its “Others.” Lawson Fusao Inada’s writings about Japanese Americans
in confinement during World War II enhanced my understanding of the
importance of rethinking the nation-space. Andrew X. Pham’s Catfish and
Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage through the Landscape and Memory of Viet-
nam helped me better understand the intersections of race, gender, sexuality,
and class in the multilayered displacement of Vietnam War refugees and
their children in the American metropolis.
The communities and their leaders I encountered during my research in
California Chinatowns in Locke, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Weaver-
ville have also inspired me. Locke, established by Chinese workers near the
levee they built along the Sacramento River after their town at Walnut Grove
burned down, is especially important to my learning about history and geog-
raphy. Connie King, a descendent of one of the original Chinese families in
Locke, was a driving force in having a memorial park built and dedicated
to its founders. Locke enables me to recognize the importance of space for
exclusion and isolation and for resistance to assimilation, invisibility, and
historical erasure and amnesia.
My colleagues at University of the Pacific have been a nurturing source
for my aspirations. The late Robert Cox showed me Chinatown in Stockton,
ix