THE POSSIBILITY OF HOPE: MEMORY AND AFFECT IN CONTEMPORARY ASIAN AMERICAN AND U.S. LATINX LITERATURE

Abstract

Since the 1980s, contemporary U.S. minority writers have returned to the 1960s in their texts. Through memory, aesthetic form, and setting, writers like Maxine Hong Kingston and Cherríe Moraga continue to evoke the era of the 1960s, synonymous with its social and political movements. In short, the literature of our neoliberal present is colored by the spirit of the 1960s. In this moment, why are so many contemporary authors returning to the 1960s in their fiction? How does this return to the past either foreclose or enable possibility in the present? In "The Possibility of Hope: Memory and Affect in Contemporary Asian American and U.S. Latinx Literature," I argue that these writers attempt to garner past moments of possibility to create a strong affective hope in the present. In examining the texts of Asian American and U.S. Latinx writers specifically, I also uncover how minority groups that have been rendered "alien" in the U.S. social and cultural imaginary seek to re-inscribe themselves in the historical moment of the 1960s in order to open up the potential for hope. My dissertation examines several ways in which writers use space to evoke the spirit of the 1960s: through psychological spaces, physical spaces, and embodied spaces. By considering the turn to the 1960s, I uncover how writing about the past enables hope for the future.