ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a lesson unit on ekkyō-bungaku (lit., border-crossing literature), in an advanced Japanese language course at a women's college in the U.S. Ekkyō-bungaku is a genre of literature that is written by a writer who chooses to write in a language other than his/her native-tongue. Their work is said to shatter the myth of unique difficulty of Japanese, and bring new perspectives and creative power into the language. Contrary to the norm in Japanese language courses that values texts written by native speakers, use of ekkyō-bungaku offers opportunities to challenge such categories as “Japanese speakers” and “Japanese literature”—categories that mark what/who is inside and outside.
Based on students' essays and interviews, I discuss how they started to shift their relationship to the language from feeling “an outsider” to a legitimate member of the language users. By reading the ekkyō texts, they realized that one can cross a language border to be a fluent writer. Such realization allows them to see themselves occupying a space that is neither insider nor outsider to the language. I argue that this line of thinking, in effect, pushes students to question the border itself that is drawn between one language to others.
