PhD, Literature, Duke University, 2010
Dartmouth College
McNair Scholar, 2000
Major: English
Mentor: Dr. Monica Chiu, Assistant Professor of English
Research Topic: The Model Minority Mulatto: Amy Yamada鈥檚 Trash and the Tradition of the Interracial Outcast
The Model Minority Mulatto: Amy Yamada鈥檚 Trash and the Tradition of the Interracial Outcast
There are numerous 鈥渃lassic鈥 American literary motifs that seek to address issues of race in terms of a black/white paradigm. One of the more popular themes that has had a profound impact on our national literature is the fear of miscegenation, or an interracial coupling that produces a 鈥渕ulatto鈥 offspring. This hybridization of races attracts the most hostile forms of discrimination because, among other things, it poses a direct threat to the supposed 鈥減urity鈥 of the white gene pool. More often than not, the interracial figure is represented as an outcast who is faced with the decision either to remain alienated from society or to become a part of it by 鈥減assing鈥 as white.
Amy Yamada鈥檚 Trash, first translated into English in 1994, is a subtle and complex response to such obtuse generalizations regarding race, specifically, black/Japanese relations. The novel depicts the problematic relationship that evolves between a Japanese woman, Koko, her alcoholic and disillusioned black boyfriend, Randy, and his Japanese/black son, Jesse, from another woman. Yamada revises the motif of the hybrid outcast described above in order to comment on contemporary notions of racial conflict.
Choosing literary criticism (Gates, Johnson, Sollors) and cultural theory (D眉ttmann, Lowe, Okihiro) as enabling methodologies, I find that the fundamental dynamic of the motif鈥攆orcing the subject to choose either a 鈥渨hite鈥 identity or a 鈥渂lack鈥 one鈥攊s disrupted because the interracial figure in this case is black and Japanese. Thus, Asians鈥 in-between status on the spectrum of black and white extremes creates a tension in the novel that critiques America鈥檚 underlying fear of miscegenation and blood hybridity. The implications of Yamada鈥檚 text are far-reaching, for she not only resists portraying blacks and Asians as naturally antagonistic (which is what the model minority stereotype advocates), but she also discredits the black/white and either/or paradigms which frame Americans鈥 understanding of race.
