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  • Keywords: postmemory x
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The plot of return from America to Asia to search for origins is central to Asian diasporic literature of the past 120 years. By returning to Asia and writing about their ancestors, Asian North Americans (those born or raised in the United States or Canada) expand their cultural understanding and produce narratives that serve as “countermemory,” contributing to a communal memory that is “oppositional . . . the memory of the subordinated and the marginalized, memory from below versus memory from above,” in the words of Viet Thanh Nguyen. For immigrants and their offspring, Asian diasporic narratives of return typically reflect experiences of “racial melancholia,” described as unresolved mourning for the losses associated with migration, in the context of social discrimination, exclusion, or marginalization due to race. For Asians, racial melancholia is exacerbated by its incompatibility with ideals of America as equal, inclusive, and race-blind. Writers sometimes use narratives of return to comprehend and resolve their parents’ melancholia by remembering their stories and articulating their grievances; this process of countermemory typically requires a lengthy cultural apprenticeship. In addition to family histories, narratives of return encompass essays, memoirs, novels, poems, plays, and films. They may also be written by or about protagonists born and raised in Asia who return, perhaps to reform or improve their homeland, after living abroad.