earticle

영어

This paper ponders relations between Asia and its diasporas other than those of popular binary patterns of past Asia and present diasporas. Contemplating transnational connectivities newly enabled in the age of globalization, the paper examines the possibilities of diasporic Asians and Asian Americans’ horizontal and circular encounters, in both temporal and spatial senses, not with Asia as the supposed origin/past, but with constantly changing present Asia. Karen Tei Yamashita’s Circle K Cycles is analyzed as a text that presents such possibilities of diasporic/Asian/American writers’ imaginative encounters with Asia as its stories circle through ever changing heterogeneous locations of diasporic/Asian Americas and Asia. The economic inequalities and discrimination Japanese Brazilian dekasegi workers experience in Japan are juxtaposed with Japanese American Yamashita’s relatively comfortable and voluntary transnational experience. In the process, Yamshita succeeds in presenting heterogeneous transnational movements of different diasporic groups in the age of globalization. While some national group’s movements are not so much voluntary as the movements are governed by global economics, political decisions of nation-states, and the ideology of race, others can freely choose the transnational movements as a way of exploring new world. Despite the inequality and different experiences, the world created in Circle K Cycles presents intriguing flows and mixtures of heterogenous individuals and their cultures, allowing readers to experience imaginary multiple border crossings across Brazil, America, and Japan.