asianamlitfans | Apr. 3rd, 2009

A Review of Maria C. Zamora’s Nation, Race & History in Asian American Literature: Re-Membering the Body (Peter Lang Publishing, 2008).

Maria C. Zamora’s Nation, Race & History in Asian American Literature: Re-Membering the Body “considers the symbolic economy of the body in three selected literary texts. The project is, in the end, based on a recognition of the overriding tension between the power of literature and art to transcend race/gender/sex/history, and the deconstruction of such presumptions by showing how strongly those differential forces impinge upon any notion of universality” (31). The slim monograph employs three extensive and elegant close readings of oft-cited Asian American literary texts: David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters, and Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging. The question of the “body” is central to Zamora’s work in that she seeks to explore how fictional representation yet negotiates a very material problematic, wherein characters must negotiate the relationship they maintain to their bodies, precisely because the body is the site that can be regulated by transnational forces, nation-state apparatuses, cultural mores, and various social rubrics. Earlier, I reviewed Klara Szmanko’s monograph on invisibility in Asian American and African American literatures and I noted that one of the major strengths of that work exists in relation to the careful, but nevertheless exceeding readable critical prose. Zamora’s Nation, Race & History in Asian American literature functions with similar analytical grace and fluidity. The introduction neatly sets up the major interventions of the project, articulating the key terms through which the primary texts will be read. The opening provides a compelling personal anecdote which grounds the way by which literary texts not only represent bodies, but also remind us that bodies are themselves texts that must be read, analyzed, and contextualized in a larger superstructural frame. Zamora is also quick to note that by using the word “nation,” it would seem she would be running counter to the major changes that have shifted the field toward the transnational, but the function of race in its domestic context moves in a dialectical relation to the transnational elements of the various texts she has chosen.

Interestingly, Zamora embraces the nature of “close reading” that dominate the following chapters, providing extensive and meticulous critiques of particular scenes, plot developments, and characters of the aforementioned three novels. While the readings themselves are quite strong, one elements that each chapter could have benefited from was a stronger critical archive. There is not a clear sense, for instance, of the various readings that have already been generated on M. Butterfly and the critical lacuna presents a major problem especially when some of the readings that appear do not necessarily provide unique interventions. Where Zamora shines is the areas in which the readings most specifically bolster her argument. For instance, of Song Liling, Zamora contends, “Before his mirror and his audience, he removes his make-up, his wig, and his feminine attire. In a few brief minutes, the actor not only redresses, but re-orients his entire body. He adopts a new walk, a new center of gravity, a certain hipless swagger. He undertakes the myriad of unidentifiable things that make the male body for Western audiences. The body is exposed as the ultimate prop on this mirrored stage. It is fitting that this moment occurs on the margins of what might be considered the authorized/active stage” (48). This critique is particularly instructive in advancing the poststructural approach to Asian/American performance, but once again I felt keenly aware that she had not cited the work of Josphine Lee or Karen Shimakawa in this chapter, nor configured her reading in conversation with Colleen Lye’s compelling critique in The Ethnic Canon. Nevertheless, the moments where Zamora utilizes the template most specifically about the somatic nature of the Asian American experience, the readings shine. Of the three “body” chapters, the more compelling two explore Dogeaters and Blu’s Hanging. In relation to Blu’s Hanging, Zamora asserts that the novel “underscores the significant question of how subjects are formed ‘in-between’ or in excess of, the sum of the parts of difference (race, class, sex). The novel can be read against the nationalist grain of what may be recognized as the central imperative of Asian American Studies—the call for Asian American solidarity” (59). What is most productive about her reading here is that she invigorates the notion that Asian American identity must be thought of as a shifting site of articulation and thus, even in this moment of panethnic rupture, the very flexibility of the term “Asian America” must allow for the possibility of these ruptures and for these ruptures to inform the future course of the field. Zamora’s reading of Dogeaters is an excellent example of extensive character critiques as she takes time to look at and explore the various figurations that appear in the novel, ranging from Rio Gonzaga, to the star-crossed Mahubay Studios star, Lolita Luna, and finally to the beauty pageant turned guerrilla fight, Daisy Avila. The overall reading is contextualized from the complex colonial and postcolonial milieu in which the novel is set: “Dogeaters foregrounds the connections and discontinuities between a diasporic location and the Filipino nationalism that emerges as a consequence of (and challenge to) Spanish colonialism (16th century-1896), U.S. colonialism (1902-World War II), and neo-colonial martial law (1954-1972). The novel is a dense pastiche that brings alive in messy detail a history of particular Asian American inter-penetrations” (Zamora 84). Here, the violence visited upon women’s bodies takes central stage in Zamora’s critique.

Like Szmanko’s book, the accessibility of these readings makes Zamora’s monograph a useful companion to an introductory Asian American literature course where texts such as M. Butterfly, Dogeaters, or Blu’s Hanging are already commonly taught. I end my review with Zamora’s concluding statement:

“National or ethnic identity (American, Asian, or otherwise) is fluid and migratory. Perhaps Asian American literature can be read as a literature of protest and exile, a literature about place and displacement, a literature concerned with psychic and physical ‘home’. . . . Ultimately there is no ‘home,’ except for a place of contestation that negates as well as affirms. National or ethnic identity, like ‘home,’ is ever in process. It is less a refuge than the site of contending multiple meanings” (108).

Here, I think what is most productive is the concept that “home” might be evacuated if only because if we are to embrace the possibilities of Chuh’s concept of “subjectless discourse,” then there is no natural center. For Asian American literary criticism, this message is clear not only in terms of content analysis but from the variegated terrain that the field now stands to circumscribe, which ranges from classic-texts such as Okada’s No-No Boy to the more avant-garde poetics of Hoa Nguyen. In this radically heterogeneous terrain, there are multiple “homes,” not singular and taking Zamora’s position then, multiple “bodies” to situate in history, social contexts, and in the aesthetic realms.

Here is the author’s educational affiliation and webpage:

http://www.kean.edu/~mzamora/

Buy the book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Nation-History-Asian-American-Literature/dp/1433102684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238805419&sr=1-1