Abstract
ABSTRACT Russell C. Leong 梁志英’s picaresque ballad, “Azure in Angel City: A Blues Sketch, Part One”, alludes to the Chinese classic saga, Journey to the West, to conjure up a modern odyssey that begins in the Los Angeles River and ends in Sri Lanka. It features four characters from Los Angeles, Cambodia, China, and Tongva land. By working together the quartet braves the world today: racism, poverty, police brutality, political corruption, rampant consumerism, ecological destruction, and spiritual void. The poem exemplifies what Leah Thomas calls “intersectional environmentalism”, whereby interdependent living among those most marginalized can be most sustainable. The ballad embeds allusions to the Bible, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Greek mythology, Tongva beliefs, and Sanskrit literature including Méghadúta, Ramayana, and Mahabharata. The article’s analysis shows how diasporic Chinese literature epitomizes world literature, and how cross-cultural coalition offers a solution, based on intersectionality and social interdependence, to our discordant world.
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