ABSTRACT
It eludes no scholar’s observation that the increasing global flows of modern diaspora, which overcome distance/separation, have created the effects of spatial compression. In light of the shrinking of the globe, we need to reformulate the earlier concepts of “place” that are no longer adequate to describe the change of our sense of identity in relation to the expanding cross-border interactions. In this context, this chapter will make a few inquiries into Asian diaspora poetry in America, with emphasis on the relationship between the changing meaning of place and the articulation of diasporic identity. As mutual penetration among different cultural locations has dramatically increased, we need to explore the influence as well as the consequence of place-in-displacement on the formation of identity across cultural and national boundaries. With its ethnic vacillation and cultural ambivalence, Asian diaspora poetry demonstrates that the elements of different places may merge in a process of cultural spacing, which challenges the force of a singular cultural dominance by relocating the site of identity articulation in a domain of “nonlimited locality.” As Edward Casey observes, “As deeply localized, nomad space always occurs as a place-in this place. But as undelimited,
it is a special kind of place. It is a place that is not just here, in a pinpointed spot of space, but in a ‘nonlimited locality’” (1997, 304). Diasporas, in the process of crossing and recrossing multiple borders of language, history, race, time and culture, must challenge the absolutism of singular place by relocating the trajectory of their identity in the multiplicity of plural interrelationships.
