Migrant and Minority Nostalgia in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Circle K…

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_3783
dc.title	Migrant and Minority Nostalgia in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Circle K Cycles
dc.contributor.author	Micheli Grazia
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/annali-di-ca-foscari-serie-occidentale/2020/54/migrant-and-minority-nostalgia-in-karen-tei-yamash/
dc.description.abstract	This essay explores the concept of nostalgia through an analysis of Circle K Cycles (2001), a creative (auto)ethnographic text in which the Japanese American writer Karen Tei Yamashita portrays Japanese Brazilians’ ethnic return migration to Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. In the face of social marginalisation and the hegemonic pressures of Japanese culture to conform to a standard of ‘pure Japaneseness’, Japanese Brazilians reinforce their attachment to Brazil, which they express in the form of nostalgia, or saudade. Yet Yamashita criticises any idea of cultural separateness and ‘purity’, both by experimenting with form and by describing phenomena of cultural hybridisation.
dc.relation.ispartof	Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 54 \| September 2020
dc.issued	2020-12-22
dc.dateAccepted	2020-09-07
dc.dateSubmitted	2020-09-03
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2499-1562
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/AnnOc/2499-1562/2020/54/009
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Asian American literature
dc.subject	Asian American literature
dc.subject	Circle K Cycles
dc.subject	Circle K Cycles
dc.subject	Ethnic return migration
dc.subject	Ethnic return migration
dc.subject	Japanese Brazilians
dc.subject	Japanese Brazilians
dc.subject	Karen Tei Yamashita
dc.subject	Karen Tei Yamashita
dc.subject	Nostalgia
dc.subject	Nostalgia

Research Article
open access peer reviewed

Migrant and Minority Nostalgia in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Circle K Cycles

Grazia Micheli University of Nottingham, UK

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abstract

This essay explores the concept of nostalgia through an analysis of Circle K Cycles (2001), a creative (auto)ethnographic text in which the Japanese American writer Karen Tei Yamashita portrays Japanese Brazilians’ ethnic return migration to Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. In the face of social marginalisation and the hegemonic pressures of Japanese culture to conform to a standard of ‘pure Japaneseness’, Japanese Brazilians reinforce their attachment to Brazil, which they express in the form of nostalgia, or saudade. Yet Yamashita criticises any idea of cultural separateness and ‘purity’, both by experimenting with form and by describing phenomena of cultural hybridisation.

Published

Dec. 22, 2020

Accepted

Sept. 7, 2020

Submitted

Sept. 3, 2020

Language

Keywords: Circle K Cycles • Ethnic return migration • Karen Tei Yamashita • Nostalgia • Japanese Brazilians • Asian American literature

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOc/2499-1562/2020/54/009

Copyright: © 2020 Grazia Micheli. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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