Questioning Borders: Ecoliteratures of China and Taiwan (Global Chinese Culture)

By: Robin Visser

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Synopsis: Indigenous knowledge of local ecosystems often challenges settler-colonial cosmologies that naturalize resource extraction and the relocation of nomadic, hunting, foraging, or fishing peoples. Questioning Borders explores recent ecoliterature by Han and non-Han Indigenous writers of China and Taiwan, analyzing relations among humans, animals, ecosystems, and the cosmos in search of alternative possibilities for creativity and consciousness.Informed by extensive field research, Robin Visser compares literary works by Bai, Bunun, Kazakh, Mongol, Tao, Tibetan, Uyghur, Wa, Yi, and Han Chinese writers set in Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Southwest China, and Taiwan, sites of extensive development, migration, and climate change impacts. Visser contrasts the dominant Han Chinese cosmology of center and periphery that informs what she calls “Beijing Westerns” with Indigenous and hybridized ways of relating to the world that challenge borders, binaries, and hierarchies.By centering Indigenous cosmologies, this book aims to decolonize approaches to ecocriticism, comparative literature, and Chinese and Sinophone studies as well as to inspire new modes of sustainable flourishing in the Anthropocene.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
Book Size:: 352 Pages
ISBN-13:: 9780231553292
Publisher:: Columbia University Press
Date of Addition:: 09/12/23
Copyrighted By:: Columbia University Press
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Outdoors and Nature, Social Studies, Language Arts
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.