Writing Okinawa

<p><em>Writing Okinawa</em> is the first comprehensive study in English of Okinawan fiction from it’s emergence in the early twentieth-century through its most recent permutations. It provides readings of major authors and texts set against a carefully researched presentation of the region’s political and social history; at the same time it thoughtfully engages with current critical perspective with perspectives on subaltern identity colonialism and post-colonialism and the nature of regional minority and minor literatures. </p><p>Is Okinawan fiction replete with geographically specific themes such as language loss identity and war a regional literature distinct among Japanese letters for flourishes of local color that offer a reprieve for the urban-weary or a minority literature that serves as a site for creative resistance and cultural renewal? This question drives the book’s argument making it interpretative rather than merely descriptive. Not only does the book provide a critical introduction to the major works of Okinawan literature it also argues that Okinawa’s writers consciously exploit to good effect the overlap that exists between regional and minority literature. In so doing they produce a rich body of work a great deal of which challenges the notion of a unified nation that seamlessly rises from a single language and culture.</p>