Asian-Latin American Literature through the Lense of Transpacific Studies

• In Event: Literature between Asia and Latin America

Abstract

Until recently, most studies about the transnational Asian diasporas in Latin America had traditionally ignored their cultural production, thus missing out on these communities’ self-definition. In this essay, I briefly theorize transpacific literary and cultural production as considered from the perspective of Latin American studies. The transpacific from a Latin Americanist perspective can be considered an alternative heuristic lens.
Latin American studies have been conspicuously absent from Transpacific Studies in spite of many Latin American countries having Pacific coastlines, a long history of exchanges with Asia since the age of the Manila Galleon, and a long tradition of both free (voluntary) and unfree (coerced) Asian immigration to Peru, Mexico, Brazil, and other countries. In fact, one can easily notice that in both Transatlantic and Transpacific studies the focus has been on Global North, wealthier countries. I argue that this lacuna or oversight must be corrected, as transpacific studies and Latin American studies undoubtedly can benefit from a fruitful dialogue and from exchanges of theories, methods, and knowledges.
In this context, for the last few years a group of researchers from different academic disciplines has been studying transpacific cross-cultural experiences between Asia and Latin America from a new perspective or framework: rather than seeing Asia-Latin America as a region to be studied (as is typical in Area Studies), it has been reconceived as an epistemological position, that is, as a lens through which to analyze and compare these sophisticated networks.

Author

• Ignacio López-Calvo, University of California/Merced