{"pk":42581,"title":"Becoming-Animal in Asian Americas: Ruthanne Lum McCunn’s \nGod of Luck\n and a Watanabean Triptych (Three Poems by José Watanabe)","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Considering the implicit North American and Anglophone core of Asian American literature traditionally conceived, this essay discusses two examples of literatures of the Asian Americas. A narrative of a Chinese coolie’s heroic escape from a Peruvian guano mine, Ruthanne Lum McCunn’s novel \nGod of Luck\n (2008) introduces a lesser-known point of view to the field: the nineteenth-century Chinese coolie in Peru. Rather than embrace the emblematic hero who accedes to voice, this essay attempts to read outside of an anticipated rubric of individual politico-economic repletion. In the poetry of Peruvian writer José Watanabe (1946–2007), motifs of animal encounter abound—yet dogs, fish, and other kinds of life are never deployed as a discrete metaphor through which we can see and know ourselves. As readers we are shifted to the edge of the world, in a “becoming-animal” that explores not \nthe\n Asian American, but its restless morphing, illegibly human or otherwise.","language":"en","license":null,"keywords":[{"word":"Asian American Literature"},{"word":"Ruthanne Lum McCunn"},{"word":"Chinese Coolie"},{"word":"José Watanabe"},{"word":"Becoming-Animal"},{"word":"Asian American Studies"}],"section":"SPECIAL FORUM: Redefining the American in Asian American Studies: Transnationalism, Diaspora, and Representation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/84x5v5qj","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Michelle","middle_name":"Har","last_name":"Kim","name_suffix":"","institution":"","department":"None"}],"date_submitted":"2012-06-20T12:57:05Z","date_accepted":"2012-06-20T12:57:05Z","date_published":"2012-06-21T07:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/jtas/article/42581/galley/31790/download/"}]}