Paper short abstract:

This presentation investigates the Asian American naturecultural landscapes within Ruth Ozeki’s novel, A Tale for the Time Being (2013) to seek speculative “ways home” that dually refuse to perpetuate systems of settler colonialism and resist structures of Asian American alienation.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation articulates the Asian American naturecultural landscapes within Ruth Ozeki’s novel, A Tale for the Time Being (2013), in seeking speculative “ways home” that refuse to perpetuate systems of settler colonialism and resist structures of alienation. Critical Asian American settler colonial studies has emerged through the work of scholars such as Haunani-Kay Trask and Candace Fujikane, who investigate the utilization of settler colonial structures by Asian American communities to continue the dispossession of the Kanaka Maoli in Hawai’i. Through critical attention to Asian American naturecultures, I describe a broader and entrenched understanding of the effects of settler colonialism on the North American landscape. Furthermore, the systems of settler colonialism that dually silence indigenous being and alienate Asian American beings from the landscape are traced beyond the human body and into oysters, bamboo, wolves, and other beings. Thus, I present the need for a more-than-human transformation of Asian American settler colonial participation. The final section of this article explores how the Jungle Crow invites critical yet hopeful speculation of futurities that focus on finding reciprocal and respectful kinship between naturecultural Asian American settlers and indigenous communities. In “seeing the way home”, this article urges transformative praxes of migration that are disentangled from normative settler colonial narratives. Thus, this presentation urges for novel praxes of settling, which not only refutes the settler colonial project but seeks restorative justice through envisioning shared futures.