Mapping the Chinese Diaspora: Chinatowns in Contemporary Latin American Literature (1963-2016)

My research project defines literary Chinatowns in Latin American literature as “places” ––physical spaces that are given meaning by human beings, an idea popularized by cultural geographer Tim Cresswell. This theoretical framework offers a new perspective on literary Chinatowns—one that does not reduce them to the mysterious and exotic so often associated with Chinatowns and Chinese immigrants in literature. Instead, this reading insists upon a wide range of possibilities when studying the Chinese diaspora––it departs from the one research-one country theoretical framework. To challenge the misconception that “all the Chinese in Latin America arrived at the same time” and other stereotypes, in my dissertation I use the literary portrayals of Chinatowns in Spanish American novels––those ¬¬of Mexico, Puerto Rico, Peru, and Argentina––as coordinates that map out the depictions of diverse immigrational fluxes in North America, South America, and the Caribbean. In addition to mapping out geographically the whereabouts of Chinese immigrants, my dissertation also highlights the need to reclaim collective memories of violence and to fight against racism of Chinese “outsiders” in modern times. The first chapter of this dissertation studies how the Chinatowns depicted in Mexican novels recover and represent collective memories in Ojos de lagarto (2009), Verde Shanghai (2011), and La casa del dolor ajeno (2013). The second chapter examines how the literary portrayal of crucial Chinese associations in Peru shift in the way Peruvians view Chinese immigrants. La ciudad (1963), El tramo final (1985), and El misterio del barrio chino (2013). Chapter three offers a close reading of three recent Puerto Rican novels–– Simone (2011), Barra china (2012), and Flor de Ciruelo y el viento (novela china tropical) (2011) and shows that Chinatowns in Puerto Rican literature are where Chinese characters are eroticized through intertextual maneuver dialoging with classic Chinese literature. The fourth chapter studies the Chinatown in Argentinian novels as catalysts of rites of passage that occur during physiological changes or traumatic incidents for Chinese immigrants in Tacos altos (2016), Chuan (2013), and Un chino en bicicleta (2007).