Acquired Alterity: Migration, Identity, and Literary Nationalism

Description

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. This is the first book-length study in English of the Japanese-language literary activities of early Japanese migrants to Brazil. It provides a detailed history of Japanese-language bookstores, serialized newspaper fiction, original creative works, and critical apparatuses that existed in Brazil prior to World War II. This case study of the reading and writing of one diasporic population challenges the dominant mode of literary study, in which texts are often explicitly or implicitly understood through a framework of ethno-nationalism. Self-representations by writers in the diaspora reveal flaws in this prevailing framework through what Edward Mack calls “acquired alterity,” in which expectations about the stability of ethnic identity are subverted in surprising ways. Acquired Alterity encourages a reconsideration of the ramifications (and motivations) of cultural analyses of texts and the constructions of peoplehood that are often the true objects of literary knowledge production. Cover Lilienthal imprint Series page Title page Copyright page Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. The State Japanese-Language Readers Outside Japan 1908-24: The Early Years of the Japanese in Brazil 1924-34: The Years of Japanese State-Sponsored Migration 1934-41: A Sizable, Stabilized Marketplace Territorialization and Japanese Literature Chapter 3. Culture Background Japanese-Language Newspapers in Brazil Duels in the Presence of the Shogun Iemitsu The Early Years: Historical Fiction, 1917-33 Illegal Printing Experimentation and Transition, 1932-34 A New Order, 1934-41 Origins of the Serialized Works Periodization of Prewar Serializations Notable Exceptions Translations Japanese Literatures Ten Stories from Brazil “An Age of Speculative Farming” “The Death of a Certain Settler” “Natsuyo” “Placement” “Tumbleweeds” “After We Had Settled” “Revenge” “Vortices” “Ashes” “A Certain Ghetto” Chapter 4. Ethnos Racial Other as Instrument of Justice Intraracial Betrayal Valorizing Heterogeneity Extremes of Alterity and Identity Japanese Literature as Political Project Chapter 5. Language Strategies for Representing Linguistic Diversity Nihongo bungaku: Japanese-Language Literature Chapter 6. Conclusions Naming Collections of Texts Notes Appendix 1: Proper Names Appendix 2: Koronia-go (loanwords from Portuguese) Works Cited Index