Book contents
- Diaspora and Literary Studies
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Diaspora and Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Origins Revisited
- Part II Major Concepts
- Part III Readings in Genre, Gender, and Genealogies
- Chapter 14 Transpacific Noir
- Chapter 15 From Nothing to Something
- Chapter 16 Biological and Narrative Reproduction in the Family-Saga Novels of Maryse Condé
- Chapter 17 The Embodied Feminist Futures of Diaspora
- Chapter 18 Of Origin and Opportunity
- Chapter 19 Arabic Diasporic Literary Trajectories
- Chapter 20 Decolonizing across Borders
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 14 - Transpacific Noir
from Part III - Readings in Genre, Gender, and Genealogies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 July 2023
- Diaspora and Literary Studies
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Diaspora and Literary Studies
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Origins Revisited
- Part II Major Concepts
- Part III Readings in Genre, Gender, and Genealogies
- Chapter 14 Transpacific Noir
- Chapter 15 From Nothing to Something
- Chapter 16 Biological and Narrative Reproduction in the Family-Saga Novels of Maryse Condé
- Chapter 17 The Embodied Feminist Futures of Diaspora
- Chapter 18 Of Origin and Opportunity
- Chapter 19 Arabic Diasporic Literary Trajectories
- Chapter 20 Decolonizing across Borders
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter addresses how transpacific influences shaping the genre of noir have been made into secrets. Surveying US classical film and literary noir, including Double Indemnity (1944) and The Lady from Shanghai (1947), it challenges the scholarly consensus representing noir as a cultural and intellectual collaboration between Europe and the United States. The chapter argues that eliding the history of transpacific exchanges that helped give birth to noir is itself a byproduct of US military expansion in the Asia-Pacific, a history of violence made into the verboten and unrecognizable with the aid of US popular culture. The chapter then engages with Filipino American author Carlos Bulosan’s posthumously published novel All the Conspirators, arguably the first Asian American noir novel. Written in secret to evade FBI surveillance, Bulosan’s novel went undiscovered and unpublished until the 1980s. Set in the Philippines immediately after the end of World War II, it thematizes the failures of War Crimes Tribunals to adjudicate true justice and subverts the expectations of noir to reveal hidden anticolonial solidarities, challenging US military imperialism across the Asia-Pacific.
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- Diaspora and Literary Studies , pp. 255 - 269Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023