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영어

This paper undertakes a close reading of Karen Tei Yamashita’s I Hotel to explore the novelistic experiments the writer endeavors in reconstructing the history of the Yellow Power Movement. I Hotel is an experimental, multi-genre narrative based on the struggle of Asian American activists in the late 1960s and late 1970s to prevent the demolition of a rundown hotel (International Hotel) on the edge of San Francisco’s Financial District. Among the numerous manifestations of Yamashita’s experimentation with the form and style, this paper analyzes the ‘house of fiction’ metaphor, which David Plumbo-Liu evokes in his essay “Embedded Lives: The House of Fiction, the House of History.” Another conspicious feature is the hybridity and the intertextuality the novel performs on and thrives in. The intertextuality both with exterior texts and within the various inner elements works as a way of recontexualizing the historic movement, providing links between the genres and narratives in the text. Yamashita achieves a rare feat of reconstructing a comprehensive history by combining playful novelistic techniques with compelling individual stories.