Book contents
- Los Angeles: A LITERARY HISTORY
- Los Angeles
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Temporalities
- Part II Identity, Resistance, Representation
- Chapter 6 Literature of South Los Angeles
- Chapter 7 From Boyle Heights to Westwood
- Chapter 8 Sensory Landscapes of Los Angeles
- Chapter 9 “From the Wrong Side of the Tracks”
- Chapter 10 Beyond English
- Chapter 11 Participating in the Paranoia of the Time
- Chapter 12 Liberating the Land of Cooper Do-Nuts
- Part III Place and Space
- Part IV Genre and Form
- Index
- References
Chapter 8 - Sensory Landscapes of Los Angeles
Remembering and Remaking Home in Asian American Writing
from Part II - Identity, Resistance, Representation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2026
By
Book contents
- Los Angeles: A LITERARY HISTORY
- Los Angeles
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Temporalities
- Part II Identity, Resistance, Representation
- Chapter 6 Literature of South Los Angeles
- Chapter 7 From Boyle Heights to Westwood
- Chapter 8 Sensory Landscapes of Los Angeles
- Chapter 9 “From the Wrong Side of the Tracks”
- Chapter 10 Beyond English
- Chapter 11 Participating in the Paranoia of the Time
- Chapter 12 Liberating the Land of Cooper Do-Nuts
- Part III Place and Space
- Part IV Genre and Form
- Index
- References
Summary
Weisong Gao identifies complex and ambivalent constructions of and reflections upon “home” as constituting a frame through which Los Angeles’s rich Asian American literary history can be understood. In Gao’s chapter, home is a sensory experience, felt in the body. Focusing on writers including Steph Cha, Hisaye Yamamoto, Lisa See, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Nina Revoyr, Gao interrogates complexities of cultural belonging and identity, and locates cross-racial tensions and solidarities, across a breadth of LA’s diverse Asian American literatures. Gao contends that while “Asian American” was a category initially created and defined in political terms, a sensory lens both enables a critical interrogation of that category and offers a means reaching deeper, more affectively, and more sophisticatedly into the complexities of Asian American history, experience, and relationality that LA literature manifests.
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- Los AngelesA Literary History, pp. 134 - 147Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
References
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