The anthology Nature Unfurled explores two basic questions: “How does an Asian American perspective inform environmental history? And how does an environmental perspective inform Asian American history?” Ten university-based authors take initial steps to unravel this juxtaposition. A relatively new area of scholarship, this anthology is divided into three sections: “The Nature of Yellow Perils,” “Place and Belonging,” and “Resistance and Justice.” As editor, Connie Chiang notes in the introduction, “Asian immigrants and Asian Americans left their physical mark on so many landscapes and waterscapes in large part because white entrepreneurs viewed them as well suited to arduous and exacting labor in harsh environmental conditions.”
Nature Unfurled explicitly considers how and why “Asian Americans engaged and became associated with nonhuman nature–whether flora, fauna, or specific landscapes. This collection includes both well- documented history such as the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans and subsequent redress campaign and lesser known history such as the Chinese Settlement and the Los Angeles water system, 1870s – 1930s, and the cultivation of the oyster industry in the Pacific Northwest first by indigenous Chinookan peoples then Japanese seafood companies. It acknowledges the heterogeneity of the Asian American population by including experiences from Indochinese refugees as well as older Asian American settlers of Filipino, Japanese and Chinese. Several essays, such as “The Jail in the Cellar,” by Hana Maruyama and David Two Bear also address the relationship between Asian Americans and American Indians. A global perspective is provided in the roundtable discussion, “Connecting the Filipino American Diaspora and Environmental History.”
In the late 1800’s and for most of the twentieth century, Asians in America were primarily known by their role as laborers who built the industrialized and world power known as the United States of America. Until recently, much of Asian American history has been framed as racial discrimination. This collection invites the reader to consider other concepts and larger perspectives such as biological nativism and carceral architecture.
The various essays depict the hostility and violence against Asian immigrants and Asian Americans throughout US history. More importantly, they document the Asian immigrants and Asian Americans’ creative, life-affirming responses and accomplishments in the face of adversity in varied landscapes and waterscapes. Nature Unfurled finally recognizes Asian Americans’ relation to leisure and outdoor recreation. In “Challenging White Sanctuary: Twenty-First Century Representation of Asian American Outdoor Recreation,” Sarah D. Wald juxtaposes the prevailing view that outdoor recreation and sports are dominated by white male Americans with other views. One is a view of failure. While acknowledged as among the world’s best female rock climbers as a teenager, Ashima Shiraishi focuses on her failures stating in her children’s book, “And so I started, And so I fell. And so I climbed again listening to what the fall had told me.” Another view is provided by Hank Umemoto in From Manzanar to Mount Whitney: The Life and Times of a Lost Hiker. He reached the summit of Mt. Whitney not as an individual accomplishment but as a healing process, a reckoning with the past to remember the seniors interned in Manzanar. In sum, this anthology places Asian immigrants and Asian Americans as an integral part of the natural, physical world. The front cover illustrated by Jeanne Jalandoni captures this reality succinctly.
Juanita/Nita is an activist since the 1968 BSU/TWLF San Francisco State Strike; since the 1970 census advocating for more detailed racial and ethnic data in Washington, DC, and now singing with the Seattle Raging Grannies. Her collection resides in the Manuscript Division, The Library of Congress. Author of Golden Children, Legacy of Ethnic Studies, SF State, Juanita is featured in the documentary, Agents of Change https://www.agentsofchangefilmnational.com/
