Transpacific Connections: Literary and Cultural Production by and about Latin American Nikkeijin

(Hardback)

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Transpacific Connections: Literary and Cultural Production by and about Latin American Nikkeijin is a cross-cultural work combining Latin American and Japanese studies. It contains original research on social and cultural relations between Japan and Latin America, ranging from Japanese inspirations in one of the Mexican most renowned poets, Brazilian dekasegi (temporary workers in Japan) described in a variety of testimonials, Japanese community in Brazil and its literary production, and a Mexican telenovela, inspired by the Japanese culture to European inspirations in a Nikkei Peruvian writer, Higa Oshiro.

Reviews

This important volume offers a deeper understanding of the literary and cultural production by and about Nikkeijin. The chapters not only explore novels, short stories, poems and art but also a telenovela and are written by a group of intergenerational scholars. An essential book to those who want to understand the historical, literary, cultural, and social relations between Latin America and Japan in a way that is striking, unique, and academically robust. Araceli Tinajero, The City College of New York and the Graduate Center, USA.

The collection of essays compiled in this book addresses the unique perspective of Nikkei communities without succumbing to orientalist notions of Japaneseness, offering fresh insight into the diversity of Nikkei cultural representations, often exoticized in Western academic circles. The multidisciplinary nature of the book makes it animportant reference for scholars and researchers in a variety of academic fields. Randy Muth, Kio University, Nara, Japan.

These essays are themselves ukiyo-e, or pictures of a floating world: together they constitute a signal contribution to the emerging field of Trans-Pacific Studies. Presented by some of the fields outstanding researchers, these perceptive analysesforegrounding complex relations between Japan on the one hand and Mexico, Peru and Brazil on the other offer virtual case studies in the manner in which transnational flows and intercultural identities have materialized in todays global modernity. Eugenio Matibag, Iowa State University, lowa, USA.

"TranspacificConnections: Literary and Cultural Production by and about Latin American, Nikkeijin makes an important and timely contribution to the emerging field ofTranspacificStudies. The collection offers insightful comparative analysis, a critically astute introductory essay, and original, wide-ranging, and erudite contributions. Written with meticulous research and deep expertise on culturalconnectionsbetween Latin America and Asia, it represents a significant contribution to the field because of its sustained focus on the Japanese - Latin American cultural production through not only aesthetic form but also social phenomena such as immigration. It is a necessary book that allows readers to see in detail how the complex cultural identity of the Latin American Nikkeijin is constructed. This rigorous and sophisticated volume will be an invaluable resource for scholars in Latin American Studies, Comparative Literature, andTranspacificStudies." Gorica Majstorovic, Ph.D., Professor of Spanish, Stockton University, Galloway, USA.

Author Bio

Maja Zawierzeniec, Ph.D., is a Polish Mexicanist, translator, TEDxWarsawWomen speaker and TEDxMarszalkowska organizer, and a trilingual poet, who has collaborated with a number of renowned Polish and foreign universities and other institutions as a lecturer and in a variety of cultural, social and artistic projects. She has published La mujerenelmundolatinoamericano. Literatura, historia, sociedad elcaso de Mxico (2015); Las voces sordas. El capital creativo del narco Mxico contemporneo (1985-2015) (two editions: 2016 and 2018), y El glosarioesencial del lenguaje del narcoenel Mxico contemporneo (2018) as well as four poetry books and several research articles (Mexican culture and literature, narcoculture and narcoliterature, relations betweenMexico and East Asia and linguistics).