UC Berkeley

In Place/Of Solidarity argues the exigence of developing Asian Canadian critical praxes that align and move in solidarity with Indigenous sovereignties and radical resurgence movements. In the dissertation, I analyze a body of literary texts by contemporary Indigenous and Asian North American writers whose works contain instances of reciprocal representation. I argue that actions proceeding from and grounded in praxes of acknowledgement and reciprocity constitute openings to solidarity. By enacting Asian Canadian studies explicitly with decolonial solidarities in the foreground, I argue that Asian Canadian studies may not only work in ethical alignment with Indigenous knowledges and methodologies, but may also enliven and reconstitute the solidarities upon which Asian Canadian studies is premised.

Bringing Asian Canadian studies into dialogue with scholarly work from Indigenous studies and recent research on Asian settler colonialism within a transnational Asian (North) American context, this dissertation considers reciprocal representations across a number of literary works by Indigenous and Asian Canadian women. Analyzing key texts by SKY Lee, Lee Maracle, Marie Clements, and others, and writing self-reflexively into the analysis through Trinh T. Minh-ha’s concept of “speaking nearby,” I theorize forms of relational critical praxis based on acknowledgement and reciprocity. The project takes up key urges read in the undercurrents of Asian Canadian studies to argue that even as the field grapples to enunciate its own coalitional position from which to initiate solidarity, it needs concurrently to deterritorialize and resituate Asian Canadian agency on new grounds.

The goal of this project is to posit a praxical framework for enacting Asian Canadian creative solidarity that: first, moves in alignment with Indigenous resurgence and sovereignty movements grounded in place; second, is animated by a love-based ethic for research, writing, and activism that hails from legacies of intersectional, Women of Colour, and Indigenous feminisms; and finally, shifts from analyzing Asian Canadian settler-colonialism to illuminating practices of and directions for Asian Canadian unsettling and solidarity.