In the U.S., this is followed by the “Gentlemen's Agreement” of 1908 (barring Japanese and Korean immigration), the 1917 Immigration Act (barring immigration from India), the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act (ending virtually all Asian immigration), and the 1934 Tydings-McDuffie Act (stripping Filipinos of their U.S.
and Canada, both countries ban immigration from China (1882 Chinese Exclusion Act in the U.S., Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 in Canada). For a discussion of the politics of ethnic autobiography, particularly Asian American autobiography, see Sau-ling Wong's “Autobiography as Guided Chinatown Tour?”ģSoon after the completion of the transcontinental railroads in the U.S. All four articles engage substantially with Haraway's piece in their analyses.ĢFor an overview of the autoethnographic tradition in Asian Canadian literature, see Eleanor Ty and Christl Verduyn's introduction to their edited volume, Asian Canadian Writing beyond Autoethnography. Rich with ancient Chinese mythology and cultural lore, this remarkable novel is about gender, love, honour, intrigue, and fighting against oppression.1Of particular importance to these views is Donna Haraway's influential article, “The Cyborg Manifesto,” that elucidates the racial and gendered boundaries of the human body in an era of biotechnology. Could Miranda be infected by the Dreaming Disease that makes the past leak into the present?įramed by a playful sense of magical realism, “Salt Fish Girl” reveals a futuristic Pacific Northwest where corporations govern cities, factory workers are cybernetically engineered, middle-class labour is a video game, and those who haven’t sold out to commerce and other ills must fight the evil powers intent on controlling everything. Miranda is haunted by traces of her mother’s glamourous cabaret career, the strange smell of durian fruit that lingers about her, and odd tokens reminiscent of Nu Wa. Told in the beguiling voice of a narrator who is fish, snake, girl, and woman – all of whom must struggle against adversity for survival – the novel is set alternately in nineteenth-century China and in a futuristic Pacific Northwest.Īt turns whimsical and wry, “Salt Fish Girl” intertwines the story of Nu Wa, the shape-shifter, and that of Miranda, a troubled young girl living in the walled city of Serendipity circa 2044. “Salt Fish Girl” is the mesmerizing tale of an ageless female character who shifts shape and form through time and place.
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