Transculturation processes of Asian diaspora in 21st-century Latin American and Latinx narrative : food, memory, and nostalgia.

This thesis concerns contemporary fictional narratives that take place in and out of Latin America, featuring stories of migrations that link subjects to China, Vietnam, and Japan. I appeal to a reading of Cristina García’s Monkey Hunting (2004), Oscar Nakasato’s Nihonjin (2011), and Luis Molina Lora’s Bien Cocido (2021) to study the subaltern voices of the Asian diaspora and focus on the representations and characterizations within these contemporary narratives. I write on the consequences of assimilation for members of this diaspora, problematizing the myth of an easy Latin American melting pot. I present a set of perspectives from hybrid subjects who highlight such experiences of cultural anxiety, identity crises, loss and cultural uprooting, and psychological trauma associated with memory and nostalgia as the negative impacts of acculturation. This thesis will reject the evocations of an essentialized reading of Orientalism (Said 1978) to prefer more encompassing theories of self-orientalism, hybridity, and transculturation.