“Other” and Nature: A Postcolonial Ecocritical Reading of “Yoneko’s Earthquake”

Abstract

“Yoneko’s Earthquake” is a masterpiece among the short stories by Japanese American writer Hisaye Yamamoto, and it reflects the plight and tragedy of Japanese American women. The plot of the short story is seemingly simple but profound, especially the design of the underlying text, which is full of ingenuity. From the perspective of postcolonial ecocriticism, Hisaye Yamamoto’s “Yoneko’s Earthquake” reflects the complicity of colonialism and ecologism in many aspects. Take a close look at the natural images (the dog, the field and the earthquake) in the short story. This paper tries to find an interconnected identity between the “other” and nature. The dog and the animalized human are both put in the position of the “other” under the colonial discourse; the field as a domain of colonization also nurtures the power of resistance from the “other”,; and the subversive nature of the earthquake makes the identity of “self” and “other” briefly displaced. The theory of postcolonial ecocriticism injects new vitality into this short story; meanwhile, it helps to provoke new thinking about racism and speciesism.