This book is a ground-breaking transnational study of representations of the environment in Asian American literature. Extending and renewing Asian American studies and ecocriticism by drawing the two fields into deeper dialogue, it brings Asian American writers to the center of ecocritical studies. Contributors apply a diversity of critical frameworks, including radical race studies, counter-memory studies, ecofeminism, and geomantic criticism. The book presents a compelling and timely 'green' perspective through which to understand key works of Asian American literature and leads the field of ecocriticism into previously neglected terrain.

Introduction: Ecocriticism and Asian American Literature John Gamber Part 1: The Environment and Labor 1. Environmental Narratives of American Identity: Landscape and Belonging in Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men and Milton Murayama's All I Asking for Is My Body Andrea Aebersold 2. Fae Myenne Ng's San Francisco Chinatown as a Social Space of Legal Discrimination Wenying Xu 3. "Delving and Carving Rude Nature": An Ecocritical Reading of Don Lee's Wrack and Ruin Bella Adams Part 2: The Environment and Violence 4. Contested "Frontier" and "Pioneers" in Writings about Japanese American Concentration Camps Zhou Xiaojing 5. Tilling the Soil in the Killing Fields: Cambodian American War Memoirs Helena Grice 6. Ecological Imaginations, the Vietnam War, and Vietnamese American Literature Cathy J. Schlund-Vials 7. "Guns, Race, Meat, and Manifest Destiny": Environmental Neocolonialism and Ecofeminism in Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats Youngsuk Chae Part 3: The Environment and Philosophy 8. Hisaye Yamamoto as Radical Agrarian Sarah D. Wald 9. A Geomantic Reading of Asian Diasporic Literature Stephen L. Field 10. Environment for "A Free Life" King-Kok Cheung Afterword David Eng