Unstable boundaries: the global and the local in Karen Tei Yamashita's Through the arc of the rain forest

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the novel Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990) by Asian-American writer Karen Tei Yamashita. The narrative is read as a representation of the contemporary world, in wich mobility takes place in global scale, inducing a state of unstableness of the traditional boundaries that surround our physical and non-physical spaces. The effect of this condition reshapes the local dimension and transforms spaces through juxtaposition and interconnecness. Such transformation is depicted in the mobility of the characters of the novel, whose implications are investigated from the local and the global perspective. Consequently, the national is a dimension that is highy affected, as nations seem to have their boundaries dissipated by current state of globalization represented in the novel. In addition, the present thesis constitutes an analysis that combines the aesthetic use of Magical Realism with the articulation of the global and the local is discussion of Yamashita's work. It argues that Yamashita's stylistic and structural devices surpass and expand the established scope of Asian-American literature, offering readers a new understanding of our present world, in which complexit, change and unpredictability challenge the conventional views.