How do we navigate the question of identity in the fluid and pluralist conditions of postmodern society? Even more, how do we articulate identity as a defining particularity in the disappearance of borders, boundaries, and spaces in an increasingly globalist world? What constitutes identity and the formation of narratives under such conditions? How do these issues affect not only discursive practices, but theological and ethical construction and practice? This volumes explores these issues in depth. Diasporic Feminist Theology attempts to construct feminist theology by adopting diaspora as a theopolitical and ethical metaphor. Namsoon Kang here revisits and reexamines today’s significant issues such as identity politics, dislocation, postmodernism, postcolonialism, neo-empire, Asian values, and constructs diasporic, transethnic, and glocal feminist theological discourses that create spaces of transformation, reconciliation, hospitality, worldliness, solidarity, and border-traversing. This work draws on diverse sources from contemporary critical discourses of diaspora studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, postmodernism, postcolonialism, and feminism and feminist theology from a transterritorial space. This book is a landmark work, providing a comprehensive discourse for feminist theology today.

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2013. This volume examines the complex and inter-disciplinary issue of diaspora in the context of globalisation and contributing social, historical and cultural factors of the modern world. Each chapter offers a distinct point of view and a particular way of understanding diasporas in numerous cultures and societies in different parts of the globe. The collection consists of a series of detailed analyses of aspects ranging from diasporic representations in the cinema, literature and poetry to diasporic projections in current socio-political and international matters. Each chapter provides an individual examination of a particular aspect of diaspora in order to frame a bigger picture of modern diasporic choices.

Diasporic Marvellous Realism highlights the interesting switch in perspective found in contemporary literary production where the supernatural is regarded from a diasporic perspective as marvellous rather than magical. The titular term is applied to the influence of transterritorialization on the works of first- and second generation immigrant writers when approaching and exploring the myths and legends of their culture of origin. The texts included in this analysis show that the employment of this literary philosophy and narrative technique in contemporary literature involves a fruitful refocusing of the rhetorical gaze regarding the importance of cultural heritage as vindicatory resistance to the lacunae of history and as celebratory re-enfranchisement of diasporic communities in host countries such as Canada and the UK.

Framed by a century and a half of racialized Chinese American musical experiences, Claiming Diaspora explores the thriving contemporary musical culture of Asian/Chinese America. Ranging from traditional operas to modern instrumental music, from ethnic media networks to popular music, from Asian American jazz to the work of recent avant-garde composers, author Su Zheng reveals the rich and diverse musical activities among Chinese Americans and tells of the struggles of Chinese Americans to gain a foothold in the American cultural terrain. She not only tells their stories, but also examines the dynamics of the diasporic connections of this musical culture, revealing how Chinese American musical activities both reflect and contribute to local, national, and transnational cultural politics, and challenging us to take a fresh look at the increasingly plural and complex nature of American cultural identity.

The first Okinawan immigrants arrived in Honolulu in January 1900 to work as contract laborers on Hawai'i's sugar plantations. Over time Okinawans would continue migrating east to the continental U.S., Canada, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Cuba, Paraguay, New Caledonia, and the islands of Micronesia. The essays in this volume commemorate these diasporic experiences within the geopolitical context of East Asia. Using primary sources and oral history, individual contributors examine how Okinawan identity was constructed in the various countries to which Okinawans migrated, and how their experiences were shaped by the Japanese nation-building project and by globalization. Essays explore the return to Okinawan sovereignty, or what Nobel Laureate Oe Kenzaburo called an "impossible possibility," and the role of the Okinawan labor diaspora in Japan's imperial expansion into the Philippines and Micronesia. Contributors: Arakaki Makoto, Robert K. Arakaki, Hokama Shuzen, Edith M. Kaneshiro, Ronald Y. Nakasone, Nomura Koya, Shirota Chika, Tomiyama Ichiro, Wesley Ueunten.

Memories establish a connection between a collective and individual past, between origins, heritage, and history. Those who have left their places of birth to make homes elsewhere are familiar with the question, "Where do you come from?" and respond in innumerable well-rehearsed ways. Diasporas construct racialized, sexualized, gendered, and oppositional subjectivities and shape the cosmopolitan intellectual commitment of scholars. The diasporic individual often has a double consciousness, a privileged knowledge and perspective that is consonant with postmodernity and globalization. The essays in this volume reflect on the movements of people and cultures in the present day, when physical, social, and mental borders and boundaries are being challenged and sometimes successfully dismantled. The contributors - from a variety of disciplinary perspectives - discuss the diasporic experiences of ethnic and racial groups living in Canada from their perspective, including the experiences of South Asians, Iranians, West Indians, Chinese, and Eritreans. Diaspora, Memory, and Identity is an exciting and innovative collection of essays that examines the nuanced development of theories of Diaspora, subjectivity, double-consciousness, gender and class experiences, and the nature of home.

Asian diasporas are all too often seen in terms of settlement problems in a host nation, where the focus is on issues of crime, housing, employment, racism and related concerns. The essays in this volume view Asian diasporic movements in the context of globalization and global citizenship, in which multiple cultural allegiances, influences and claims together create complex negotiations of identity.Examining a range of cultural documents through which such negotiations are conducted — literature and other forms of writing, media, popular culture, urban spaces, military inscriptions, and so on — the essays in this volume explore the meanings and experiences involved in the two major Asian diasporic movements, those of South and East Asia.

N. Jayaram provides a well-presented overview of the patterns of emigration from India, highlighting the key disciplinary perspectives and strategic approaches. The study of Indian diaspora has emerged as a rich and variegated area of multidisciplinary research interest. This volume brings together nine seminal articles by well-known scholars which deal with the empirical reality of Indian diaspora and the theoretical and methodological issues raised by it. Between them they cover a variety of important aspects such as asocial adjustment, family change, religion, language, ethnicity and culture.