1. Chinese Exclusion, Indigeneity, and Settler-Colonial Refusal in C Pam Zhang's How Much of These Hills Is Gold.
- Author
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Hunziker, Alyssa A
- Subjects
INDIGENOUS ethnic identity ,COLONIES ,RACIALIZATION ,GENOCIDE ,LAND tenure - Abstract
C Pam Zhang's 2020 novel How Much of These Hills is Gold comes at a time of increasing national conversation about land ownership and the United States' settler colonial present. By focusing on the experiences of Chinese and Chinese American miners at the height of California's Gold Rush, Zhang's novel complicates our visions of the American West and moves beyond the trope of (white) cowboys and Indians fighting along the soon-to-be-"closed" frontier. At the same time, Zhang's repeated focus on land and indigeneity calls attention to the long-standing erasure, removal, and genocide of California's Indigenous people and extends growing scholarly conversations about Asian American settler colonialism. I read Hills ' reflections on land, settlement, and what it means to build home on stolen Indigenous homelands. Working across historical and speculative fiction, Zhang's novel refuses strict generic categorization and likewise refuses narratives of settler colonialism and racialization. By thinking through land and ownership, Zhang's Chinese and Chinese American characters must learn to move beyond, and refuse, settler colonial relationships to land. For readers, Zhang's novel prompts us to imagine what our relationship to land could look like if we disentangle our desires to belong with our desires to settle, usurp, and extract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...
- Published
- 2022
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