Transpacific Literary and Cultural Connections: Latin American Influence in Asia by ed. Jie Lu and Martín Camps (review)

Transpacific studies have gravitated towards political and economic spheres, often considering US hegemony as the prime and dominating political, economic, and cultural influence. Even when it comes to literary and cultural exchange, the influence studied is often one-sided, focusing on orientalist or “Eastern” influences in Latin America. Perhaps, with the economic rise of OECD members and partners in Asia in the late 90s, the political and cultural Euro-American hegemony faces challenges as East Asian countries, particularly, became prominent economies and cultural exporters in the form of soft power politics or multicultural events hosted by institutions in Asia. Historical and evolving interactions between the Americas and Asia have often resulted in academic studies that ignore issues regarding literary and cultural connections, particularly regarding cultural exchange rather than ephemeral notions of soft power by European hegemony and Asian neo-hegemonies, as if Latin America were only a recipient of influence and constant cultural creolization. In Transpacific Literary and Cultural Connections: Latin American Influence in Asia, Lu and Camps offer a refreshing compilation of research about the overlooked influence of Latin American literature and culture in Asia, avoiding the predictable rhetoric of hierarchies of cultural powers; on the contrary, the volume favors the more realistic cultural exchanges, especially in literary and audiovisual cultural products.

“Asia has been described in Latin American literature as exotic, but also as inspiring” (1). The opening remarks, by the editors, synthesize the challenge of addressing the history of the evolving images of Asia in Latin American cultural manifestations. The book project recognizes what has become a canon of Latin American orientalism or Orient-related literatures, but “brings Asian and Latin American scholars together to explore how Latin American concepts and imageries have inspired and influenced Asian writers whose countries share Latin America’s colonial and postcolonial experiences, including the pains and sufferings resulting from all forms of exploitation” (2). The compilation emphasizes the influence of Latin America in Asia, acknowledging earlier connections through the pseudo-hegemonic cultural influences of Japan until the late 1980s in political, economic, and demographic ties. The connection and the mutual influences featuring China, South Korea, and India were more noticeable in 2000. However, when it comes to (comparative) literature, the theoretical framework of the book references Rey Chow’s insight that Europe is still the universal point of reference (3). This volume “addresses the interaction between Latin America and Asia . . . forming a new field of inquiry in Asian Studies that incorporates Latin American intellectual and cultural influences” (7). The literary and cultural context of the volume does not aim to “dislocate the West or . . . build a Latin America-Asia or Global South centrism, but to highlight evolving and emerging methods by utilizing multiple frames of reference and by expanding perspectives from different and diversified locations of knowledge production” (11).

The nine essays in the book (of which I will address only a few) examine how literature, film, and art in “Asian countries have interacted with Latin American aesthetics, queer theory, postcolonial discourse, magical realism, and postmodernist praxes” (11). Part I, “Latin America and the Philippines in the Transpacific Connections,” devotes two chapters to Filipino writer Jesús Balmori, in addition to several chapters on different topics. Ignacio López-Calvo’s “A Peripheral, South-South Literary Exchange: Balmori and the Reception of Latin American Modernismo in the Philippines” opens the volume with a necessary study of Jesús Balmori’s seminal figure in understanding a cultural exchange that avoids mere discussions of soft power or influence. López-Calvo approaches Balmori’s writing as a continuum of Modernismo that, though emerged from Latin America, rejects “the Japonaiserie popularized by Latin American modernistas, including the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío, whom Balmori deeply admired.” However, the essay also examines the “Orientalist affinities of modernistas as a direct result of the advent of the Pacific War and the brutal...