Chapter 3 - Writing Asia-Latin America

Summary

This chapter examines Asian-Latin American (literary) studies, as both a methodology and dynamic cultural production, first by tracing its precarious relation to established academic disciplines (area studies, ethnic studies, literary studies), and second by analyzing the literature of two Peruvian writers of Asian descent - Doris Moromisato and Siu Kam Wen - the former a queer poet of Okinawan descent and the latter a first-generation Chinese immigrant writer. I focus on Doris Moromisato’s literary texts that explore the figure of the dekasegi - the Latin Americans of Japanese descent who work in Japan as migrant workers - and Siu Kam Wen’s novel Viaje a ĺtaca that highlights the centrality of the Chinese coolie in Latin American history. The racialized and gendered figures of both the coolie and the dekasegi embody the complex intersections between race-class-gender-sexuality and labor in global capitalism, thereby calling into question dominant notions of nation, subjectivity, and migration. Furthermore, by troubling the boundaries of epistemological frameworks and working against the grammar of US exceptionalism, I contend that Asian-Latin American studies engages in an “Asian Americanist critique” that draws on alternative narratives and critical histories to envision counterhegemonic subjectivities and undermined global connectivities.