Fluid Faiths: Reading Religion Relationally in Asian American Literature

Abstract

Abstract:

While the designation of Asian American literature as a field dates back to as recently as the 1970s, it is nevertheless surprising that, to my knowledge, there is not a single scholarly monograph on the topic of religion in Asian American literature. However, in religious studies and the social sciences, there is a growing body of scholarship examining the role of religion in Asian American communities, and particularly, but not exclusively, the prominence of various expressions of Christianity therein. Despite this prominence, criticism within the field of Asian American literature has largely interpreted the presence of Christianity primarily in terms of its associations with oppressive colonial regimes. This article demonstrates the value of supplementing such readings with greater attentiveness to the specific religious histories underlying Asian American literature in order to better account for the ambivalence—rather than outright antagonism—toward Christianity that seems characteristic of many Asian American literary texts. Such an approach implies, just as national and racial identities are historically complex and often contested categories, that religion's cultural fluidity makes it an equally rich site for understanding literary expressions of the painful loss and transformation as well as the unexpected richness and beauty manifested within the conditions and consequences of global migration. Drawing on Shu-mei Shih's notion of relational comparison, the article turns to scholarship on the history of Christianity in both Korea and Vietnam to demonstrate how these histories inform and aid in interpreting the ambivalences of Christianity's presence in the novels Dictée by Theresa Hak Kyung and The Gangster We Are All Looking For by lê thi diem thúy.