This book brings together a group of leading and emerging scholars on the history of cultural and literary interactions between Asia and Latin America. Through a number of interlinked case studies, contributors examine how different forms of Asia-Latin America dialogues are embedded in various national and local contexts. The volume is divided in four parts: 1) Asian hybrid identities and Latin American transnational narratives; 2) translations and reception of Latin American narratives in Asia; 3) diffracted worlds of Nikkei identities; and 4) interweaving of Asian and Latin American narratives and travel chronicles. Through the lens of modern globality and Transpacific Studies, the contributions inaugurate a perspective that has, until recently, been neglected by Asian and Latin American cultural studies, while offering an incisive theoretical discussion and detailed textual analysis.

This book examines the modes of representation of the East in Argentinean literature since the country's independence, in works by canonical authors such as Esteban Echeverria, Juan B. Alberdi, Domingo F. Sarmiento, Lucio V. Mansilla, Pastor S. Obligado, Eduardo F. Wilde, Leopoldo Lugones, and Roberto Arlt. The East, which has always fascinated intellectuals and artists from the Americas, inspired the creation of imaginary elements for both aesthetic and political purposes, from the depiction of purportedly despotic rulers to a genuine admiration for Eastern history and millennial cultures. These writers appropriated the East either through their travels or by reading chronicles, integrating along the way images that would end up being universalized by the Argentinean dichotomy between civilization and barbarism, all the while assigning the negative stereotypes of the exotic East to the Pampa region. With time, the exoticism of the Eastern world would shed its geopolitical meaning and was ultimately integrated into the national literature, thus adding new elements into the Argentinean imaginary.

This book examines the modes of representation of the East in Argentinean literature since the country's independence, in works by canonical authors such as Esteban Echeverria, Juan B. Alberdi, Domingo F. Sarmiento, Lucio V. Mansilla, Pastor S. Obligado, Eduardo F. Wilde, Leopoldo Lugones, and Roberto Arlt. The East, which has always fascinated intellectuals and artists from the Americas, inspired the creation of imaginary elements for both aesthetic and political purposes, from the depiction of purportedly despotic rulers to a genuine admiration for Eastern history and millennial cultures. These writers appropriated the East either through their travels or by reading chronicles, integrating along the way images that would end up being universalized by the Argentinean dichotomy between civilization and barbarism, all the while assigning the negative stereotypes of the exotic East to the Pampa region. With time, the exoticism of the Eastern world would shed its geopolitical meaning and was ultimately integrated into the national literature, thus adding new elements into the Argentinean imaginary.

This book brings together a group of leading and emerging scholars on the history of cultural and literary interactions between Asia and Latin America. Through a number of interlinked case studies, contributors examine how different forms of Asia-Latin America dialogues are embedded in various national and local contexts. The volume is divided in four parts: 1) Asian hybrid identities and Latin American transnational narratives; 2) translations and reception of Latin American narratives in Asia; 3) diffracted worlds of Nikkei identities; and 4) interweaving of Asian and Latin American narratives and travel chronicles. Through the lens of modern globality and Transpacific Studies, the contributions inaugurate a perspective that has, until recently, been neglected by Asian and Latin American cultural studies, while offering an incisive theoretical discussion and detailed textual analysis.