Trans-poetics in Hiromi Goto’s novels

Abstract

“Trans-” ideas — such as transgender, transnation, translation, and transculture — are being redefined in current research, and their full potential as critical categories is coming into view. Stryker, Currah, and Moore propose, for instance, that “transgender” should be seen not only as a descriptive term for identity, but as a valuable tool for dismantling the violence of the binary system and transcending traditional paradigm. In this article, I explore the possibilities of the prefix “trans” as a tool to dismantle discriminatory binary oppositions in Japanese Canadian writer Hiromi Goto’s novels. I argue that Goto creates transing spaces for her inbetweeners, or monsters. By claiming territory and affirming the value of liminal spaces for outcasts and misfits, those regarded as aliens or monsters can finally be at ease and at home. I also propose that the many dysfunctional families described in Goto’s novels are not only immigrant but transnational families that have to deal with transcultural politics to understand each other. Throughout my reading of the novels, the spatial-temporal dimensions of trans-ideas are stressed and demonstrated.

Japanese Canadian writer Hiromi Goto explores many trans-ideas, such as translation, transgender, transnation, and transculture. In her novels, namely Chorus of Mushrooms (1994), The Kappa Child (2001), Half World (2011), and Darkest Light (2012), Goto materializes the transing-space by proposing an alternative, tripartite model that substitutes the binary worldview. Within the liminal space, Goto explores the power, fluidity, and liberating potential of trans-ideas. She demonstrates that the “trans-” prefix does not indicate unilateral movements into the void, but rather interactions and mutual transformation in a tangible place. Her works show that only by constant and multidirectional transings can dead-end trajectories be opened up and circulations of energy be possible. By associating trans-ideas with racial, gendered, and cultural paradigms and discussing transing space, transmonsters, and translation in transnational families, this article explores the possibilities of the prefix trans- as a tool to dismantle discriminatory binary oppositions.

In this article I will firstly map the trajectory Goto takes in her works as she arrives at her tripartite model worldview in Half World. Then I will demonstrate that Goto opens up space and establishes territories for “othered” people. I will borrow Susan Stryker, Paisley Currah, and Lisa Jean Moore’s (2008) definition of the trans- prefix in approaching trans-ideas. But emphasis will be placed on the materialization of the in-between space as I argue that Goto defines such a milieu as where transings take place, hence the space of possibility, creativity and liberation, as well as claimed territories for the in-betweeners, outcasts, misfits, or monsters. In her most common transing space, that is home, the many immigrant families are transnational in nature and translation is inevitable. Goto shows that only by sorting out their transcultural politics, can the family members understand each other.

From ropeway to transing space

Currently, trans-theories are largely derived from the reconceptualization of transgender and the expansion of it. Susan Stryker, Paisley Currah, and Lisa Jean Moore, in their editorial for a special issue of Women’s Studies Quarterly, argue that trans-theory as a critical endeavour “explores categorical crossings, leakages, and slips of all sorts, around and through the concept ‘trans-’” (2018: 11). In recent scholarship, they point out, various researchers argue that trans-ideas should not be treated individually and in isolation due to “the interrelatedness and mutual inextricability of various ‘trans-’ phenomena” (Stryker et al., 2018: 12). Jessica Berman argues in a similar vein, associating transnational with transgender as she proposes that “a broader understanding of the work of the prefix “trans” in “transnational” and its connection to the “trans” in transgender theory is both productive and necessary” (2017: 477). In Goto’s works, trans-concepts such as transgender, transnation, translation, and transculture are closely associated with each other and their dynamics are explored. Indeed, as Goto demonstrates in her novels, trans-ideas are inextricable from one another and the reconceptualization of one opens up similar possibilities for the rest of them.

Developing from Stryker et al.’s redefinition of transgender, Berman defines the trans- suffix as follows:

The prefix “trans” contributes the oppositional valence to such words as “transgress” and “transform.” When we use it to mean not just “across,” or “to the other side of” but also “beyond, surpassing, transcending,” the prefix represents a challenge to the normative dimension of the original entity or space, a crossing over that looks back critically from its space beyond. (2017: 477–478)

If what trans- indicated was ever an unsatisfactory situation, it is now seen as a most promising place, full of potential for change. No longer does it simply describe a movement from one known status to the other; instead, it signals future-oriented possibilities.

In the same groundbreaking editorial, Stryker et al. expound the spatial–temporal dimensions in the trans- phenomena: “[W]e understand genders as potentially porous and permeable spatial territories” (2018: 12). Therefore, binary concepts, such as male and female, normal and abnormal, self and other, are not considered as isolated concepts like two opposing poles, or that transings are made as if on a single ropeway to cross over the void. Those closed-off binary ideas become trans-ideas which move and transform, all the time challenging the status quo. Moreover, at the end of the editorial, Stryker et al. advance the notion of a trans-poetics: “The movement between territorializing and deterritorializing ‘trans-’ and its suffixes […], as well as the movements between temporalizing and spatializing them, is an improvisational, creative, and essentially poetic practice through which radically new possibilities for being in the world can start to emerge” (2018: 14). This trans-poetics is essential to my reading of Goto’s works. Her fiction, in my view, demonstrates the spatial–temporal dimensions of trans-ideas by devising different models of non-linear worldviews which negate the absoluteness of binarism.

Goto illustrates her design of a globular temporal model in her 1994 novel Chorus of Mushrooms. In the novel, the grandmother, Naoe Kiyokawa, who immigrated with her daughter Keiko and her husband to Canada twenty years earlier, decides to break free from the confinement of the house in the small town of Nanton and hit the road. The disappearance of the grandmother has a great impact on the family: the mother has a psychological breakdown and Muriel, the granddaughter, heals the family by cooking Japanese food. The whole time Muriel recounts many a story to her boyfriend, who recently immigrates to Canada. When the boyfriend complains that her stories are not told in the correct sequence: “You switch around in time a lot […] I get all mixed up. I don’t know in what order things really happened” (1994/1997: 132), Muriel explains:

There isn’t a time line. It’s not a linear equation. You start in the middle and unfold outward from there. It’s not a flat surface that you walk back and forth on. It’s like being inside a ball that isn’t exactly a ball, but is really made up of thousands and thousands of small panels. And on each panel, there is a mirror; but each mirror reflects something different. And from where you crouch, if you turn your head up or around or down or sideways, you can see something new, something old, or something you’ve forgotten. (Goto, 1994/1997: 132; emphasis in original)

In the novel, time, instead of extending itself like a path from the past to the future, extends from all sides and becomes a ball. The many panels provide various points of view, and from each position the perspective is different. Goto successfully translates this special temporal model with multi-voiced narratives, a multiplicity of perspectives, and a seemingly repetitive structure. The plotline of her book spirals and coils and the following question appears many times in different ways throughout the novel: “When does one thing end and another begin? Can you separate the two?” (1994/1997: 213). With this ouroboros model, beginnings and endings morph into each other and all the positionings become equal and central.

Goto’s spatial model is more fully developed in Half World (2011) and its sequel Darkest Light (2012) which recount stories about Japanese Canadian young adults coming to terms with their racial and personal identity while saving the world from the evil and the greedy. In Half World Goto invents a fluid, interconnecting world with a tripartite, conjoined categorization: “The Three Realms — the Realm of Spirit, the Realm of Flesh, and Half World — are meant to be connected. We should move from one to the other, in due time, as each individual lives, dies, half lives, then becomes Spirit” (2011: 100). In the novel, a symbol is presented at the start, which is like a Taiji symbol but consists of three parts instead of two. The Taiji symbol is based on the binary view that the world is created out of the interactions and interchanges of powers between the two polar energies, marked in black and white, Ying and Yang. However, Goto invents a third zone, represented in grey, which takes up an equal share on the round plate. By proposing an alternative spatial model, Goto materializes the in-between world where the othered, alienated, or monsters inhabit, placing them centre stage as they become the heroes that help the world stay sane and safe. She suggests that the liminal space is in fact the link that connects and channels polar energies. A real celebration of in-betweeners is happening here. Rather than inferior beings or victims, these outliers become embodiments of hope, and are full of potential for creating better alternatives which challenge the current order.

However, if the two other worlds choose to enclose themselves and are set against each other, it is the Half World residents who would suffer the most. As Gao Zhen Xi pronounces, “Child, you cannot understand the endless repeating lives we must endure in this place. For eons upon eons we are caught in our Half Lives, repeating our moments of greatest trauma” (2011: 100). Being trapped in an isolated sphere, the people of Half World, the liminal world between the two worlds, cannot move out of their tragic life pattern but are forced to relive their trauma repeatedly. I argue that this description of a harsh life in the Half World parodies that of people who are marginalized on the basis of their non-white ethnicity and non-heterosexual orientations, or if their gender-identification falls outside the traditional paradigms. It suggests that when isolated and trapped by a binary system, people relive past pain and suffering repeatedly and unjustly, finding themselves unable to move out of the pattern or recognize their own power to change.

In her Chorus of Mushrooms, Goto envisions a way out of the dilemma, mostly in the form of an instant release, enabled by the liberating spirit of her characters who can see through the power relations in stories and change their own situations by using the same tool. As she observes in an article: “Language, the site of colonization, becomes an instrument I use to try to dismantle it. It’s very difficult. This negotiation between freeing from oppression with that which oppresses. I must be cautious” (1996: 112). Targeting language, or stories, as a space laid out with unequal power relations by those in power to oppress the subordinate, Goto fights back by claiming dominance, cutting her characters loose from the designated powerless position.

For example, the story about “Uba-Sute Yama” that Naoe tells at the request of Muriel, is a retelling of a Japanese folklore. Uba-Sute, literally means “abandoning an old woman” whilst Yama means a mountain in Japanese language. According to the legend, an old parent (when one reaches 60 years old) is carried to a remote, desolate mountain and left there to die. In her version, the elder sister pays a visit to her sister, who is about to turn 60 years old:

“Are you scared Onē-san?”

“Of what?”

“Of Uba Sute Yama?” the younger sister said, with a small shudder.

“Not at all,” the grandmother said, smacking her chocolate.

“Why not?”

“Because what we call something governs the scope and breadth of what it’ll be.” The grandmother sat up and clasped her arms around her knees.

“What do you mean?” her younger sister sat up beside her.

“It’s a place where people are abandoned. It’s a place of abandonment!” The grandmother flung wide her arms and flopped backward onto the moss.

(1997: 67–68; emphasis in original)

In the story, the elder sister is eating chocolate which is rather intrusive in a Japanese folk story. She is apparently highly conscious, as a character in a traditional story, of the force at work behind the scene: “what we call something governs the scope and breadth of what it’ll be” (1997: 67–68). And she aims to break the binding force in folk stories which serve to keep the existing world order intact. Therefore, the elder sister becomes the story teller who controls and designs her own fate instead of a character who is doomed in a tragic.

Indeed, by playing with the English words “a place where people are abandoned”, where people get deserted, and “a place of abandonment”, where people become unconstraint and lighthearted, the imaginative storyteller diffuses liberating spirits into a traditional tale where helpless and “useless” old people are abandoned as unwanted burdens. The elder sister redefines her situation and changes the ending of the story into full-spirited elderly women free themselves from the confinement of household duties and seek fun. As Larissa Lai observes: “[Goto] does not attempt to ‘set the record straight’, but rather is consciously invested in the playing out of new subjectivities that do not deny historical oppression, but at the same time, refuse to be stuck in it, or defined by it” (2014: 138). In this way, new subjectivities flow out of the containment of traditional frameworks and become alive again. This retelling of old tales, feeding contemporary empowering spirits back into what is old and obsolete, opens up the temporal borders while reaffirming the territories where the new clashes with the old and liberating energy is released.

Transmonsters at ease

The new realm provides space for all those do not fit neatly into one or “the other” realms; it is a space for in-betweeners, the unfit, aliens, or monsters. In her essay “Alien texts, alien seduction: The context of colour full writing”, Goto contemplates on her writing interests, strategies, and racial politics. She explains that she has been preoccupied by the desire for aliens: “not simple, this desire, and not necessarily innocent” (1998: 263). The desire for something alien is generated by a need to normalize and stabilize one’s understanding of the self in the general public. Therefore, some minority groups are regulated to the margins, as they are regarded as different. Moreover, Kim Toffoletti reveals in “Catastrophic Subjects” that “the monster functions both as Other to the normalized self, and as a third state or hybrid entity that disrupts subject constitution understood in terms of hierarchical binary dualisms” (2004: n.p.). Therefore, monsters, though created with insidious purposes, could also be a liberating critique, which represents an uncontainable possibility that subverts the binary orders. Indeed, Goto’s creation of aliens or monsters is another device to counter the status quo. By having monsters and aliens populate the same sphere as “normal” people do and even take central stage, Goto invites readers to reconsider the limitations of normativity and the often unquestioned validation and desire for it.

Monstrosity is a constructed idea. In “Being Becoming Monsters” Lisa Diedrich argues effectively that mirrors are essential in the construction of monstrosity: “mirror scenes demonstrate what I call being-becoming monster, a phrase meant to emphasize that the being’s monstrosity is not an attribute of his beingness but emerges in relation to the gaze of others and his own view of himself through the eyes of others” (2018: 389). On looking into the mirror and seeing through one’s own eyes the monstrosity defined by others, the being realizes its own difference, becomes painfully aware of it, and internalizes a feeling of abjection. The concept of monstrosity, with all the implications and emotions it invokes, has the intention to hurt, as people who are thus addressed are excluded and alienated from the power centre.

In the title story of Hopeful Monsters (2004), Goto tells such a story. On giving birth to a baby girl, the protagonist Hisa, a young mother, finds out that she herself, like her daughter, used to have a tail. In the end, to protect her girl from being operated upon without her knowledge, the mother leaves the hospital. She raises her girl on her own, believing the tail is a part of her daughter and formative to her identity. As the “creator” of a “monster”, Hisa, unlike Victor Frankenstein, does not abandon her child and refuses to rectify the abnormality. By choosing to stand by her child, Hisa prevents her daughter from being alienated and seeing herself as a monster. Hence, as the title suggests, the concept of monstrosity is subverted while hopeful energy is released.

Monstrosity has become an important critic tool in trans-theories, and is often explored through rereadings of Frankenstein’s monster. In the influential essay, “My words to Victor Frankenstein above the village of Chamounix: Performing transgender rage” (1994) Stryker defines the motif of the monster as an embodiment of living experience as a trans person, one that is deeply painful yet boldly liberating. In “The Trans Legacy of Frankenstein”, Jolene Zigarovich argues that “suturing science, medicine, reproduction, and science fiction with trans embodiment stimulated a positive monstrosity, exposed the unlimited body, and created a space of radical possibility” (2018: 269). Indeed, monstrosity puts the intense conflicts of those who define monsters and those who are defined as monsters in the spotlight. And by valiantly claiming monstrosity for oneself, the power relationship between gazers and gazees is turned around — at least on the part of the monster, who can enjoy the power brought by being different.

In Goto’s novels, monsters, who are often Japanese folklore figures, walk on Canadian urban streets. ¹ As Guy Beauregard argues: “By explicitly adopting and adapting ‘impure’ myths and legends, Goto refuses to accept the ‘fixed tablet of tradition’ offered to her by hegemonic groups; she refuses their imperative to reproduce ‘Japanese culture’” (1995/1996: 48). For example, in the same “Uba-Sute Yama” story mentioned earlier, the sisters decide to have a total abandonment by “flopping backwards on the springy moss” and “[enjoying] smoking a package of Mild Sevens and nibbling on a Meiji chocolate bar” (Chorus of Mushrooms: 67). Folklore figures that are usually perceived as culturally specific and territory-bound are now walking at ease across country borders and having free access to international commodities. The mobility and resourcefulness enjoyed by the seemingly stagnant, unchanged and fixed cultural myths invite readers to become aware of the changed conditions of today’s national culture and the reality, even inevitability, of cultural interchange and mingling.

The use of tricksters, which is more familiar in the context of aboriginal and ex-slave writing, has its own significance and features in Goto’s works. The tricksters in these texts are all from deep in Japanese cultures: incarnations of culture and history from a faraway place and time. As Elizabeth Ammons insightfully argues: “because [the] trickster won’t be contained, trickster strategies and tales provide a way of pulling together conflicting worldviews and sets of values into coherent, new identity. This identity is turbulent, shape-changing, contradictory, ‘bad,’ culturally central, liminal, powerful, power-interrogating” (1994: xi). It seems that tricksters are endowed with a total mobility which enables them to travel between worlds, cultures and any other boundaries. As they are malleable and shape changing, tricksters are able to contain the conflicts without being tied down. The mobility of the trickster figures suggests an active mode of cultural interaction where myth figures, instead of remaining where they are in time and space, travel to Canadian cities and seek out Japanese descendants to teach them a lesson about self-love. For example, in Goto’s novels, the kappa is a typical trickster character as she is a social delinquent and walks outside the borders of morality and mortality. The kappa is the Japanese water spirit, described in folklore as a childlike (seven- or eight-year-old) green creature with a turtle-like back, a dish-shaped head (with water in it, which is essential for its survival), and webbed fingers and toes. In Japanese folklore tales, a kappa is sometimes mischievous or vicious, but can also be kind and helpful to humankind. By having monsters cross borders between human and nonhuman, sensible and senile, trustworthy and mischievous, Goto makes these borders porous and ambivalent. However, as the monsters are not accepted by either sphere, they are also the embodiment of the in-betweeners.

Moreover, the monster’s body can be seen as a liminal space. As Libe García Zarranz argues, “It is precisely in the liminal spaces […] where these writers have found the productive potential for creative, political, and ethical intervention in today’s messy world. One of these liminal spaces, or contact zones […] can be found in the porosity between human, nonhuman, and more-than-human material bodies, as well as in the transgression of the borders of corporeality” (2017: 35). Goto’s monsters, be they mythical figures, aliens, or residents in Half World, find a way to contact people, most often those who are uneasy in human society as they feel excluded, unrecognized, and unloved. But through meaningful communication with the monsters, human characters learn to accept their own differences whilst coming to understand their commonality with the monsters. Realizing that it is precisely the positioning in a liminal space that renders what is extraordinary into the monstrous, the human characters are then able to come to terms with themselves and move out of the designated marginal place to which they had resigned themselves. For example, in The Kappa Child (2001), Goto brings the Japanese water fairy to Canadian cities. On the night of the last visible total lunar eclipse of the twentieth century, the narrator has an unusual encounter with “Stranger” who may have impregnated her by performing Japanese-style wrestling with her naked under the moon. Since then the narrator is convinced that she is pregnant with a kappa child. As the unnamed protagonist carries a kappa child within her, she becomes a contact zone where different cultures meet, interact and even clash. ²

Unlike some other Asian Canadian writers, such as Joy Kogawa, who tend to hint that racial discrimination exists only in the past as they use a celebrating tone in expressing their confidence and gratitude in post multiculturalism era, ³ Goto works to raise awareness about ongoing racial discrimination and its destructive effects on ethnic minorities in current times. In her essay “Alien Texts”, Goto exposes the lasting effect of “white denial” on ethnic minority subjects: “The systemic disbelief that racism is historically structured and maintained within all aspects of society in a colonized country: its politics, law, education (nothing higher about this institution), administration, mass media, and yes, even its art. ‘White denial’ is the conscious and unconscious perpetration of systemic oppression” (Goto, 1998: 265). Writing for (or to) white readers, Goto consciously educates them by unsettling their sense of familiarity on her “ground”. The purpose is to make them sense injustice in the existing social order and reflect on their own racial politics, as they may simply not realize they hold racial prejudices which affect their decision-making. In a story Goto recounts within her essay “Alien Texts”, the character Sharon meets an alien in her bed and it begs for water: “Now water! Why not just move right in? Sharon stomped out the door to the washroom down the hall. She hadn’t brought her own mug, but used the tan stained plastic tumbler with the slimy bottom. Someone brought it up from the cafeteria, and no one ever used it unless they were shit-faced” (1998: 265; emphasis in original). It is not because the alien is asking too much or unreasonably that Sharon reacts this way. Rather, Sharon rationalize her harshness out of a belief that as an other, the alien does not deserve equal treatment. In The Kappa Child a character observes: “Many people don’t even think. They enact their lives without understanding the consequences of their choices” (2001: 187). Goto endeavours to raise awareness about “unintentional” bias, showing that there will be consequences as a result of people’s unconscious acts.

Moreover, Goto also portrays monsters at ease who can traverse the spheres at will. In Chorus of Mushrooms, Naoe meets a truck driver, Tengu, a Japanese mythic figure, who offers her a ride. On discovering that Tengu has experiences of teaching in Japan and loves Japanese culture and food, Naoe invites him for a feast which leads to them having sex. Mark Libin argues:

Tengu’s character creates an ambiguous space for himself in a text that presents itself as a struggle to define Japanese Canadian identity against the white mainstream. The very definition of the Japanese Canadian subject is extended in the figure of Tengu, who becomes a part of that community by joining the “we” of eating, of story-telling, and — as his relationship with Naoe culminates in a motel room — of sexuality. (1999: 135)

Japonists in occidental countries often entertain an orientalist craving for Japanese curiosities. Unlike them, Tengu, by actively developing a deep and meaningful relationship, through teaching, living, and eventually enacting the culture, opens up possibilities in the often essentialized cultural identity. Here, the transing is reversed as we see an Albertan cowboy learning and approaching the Japanese language and culture. As Eva Darias-Beautell argues: “Goto’s text stresses the increasing lack of coincidence between identity and place, culture and nation, but looks at it not as a problem but as a source of cultural empowerment and enrichment” (2003: 18). Both of the characters enjoy remarkable mobility: not only has Tengu been to Japan and works as a truck driver, but Naoe embarks on a marvellous journey after she leaves home, where everything is stagnant. By contrast, meeting in a moving truck and sharing memories about places and people bring Naoe and Tengu close. And by sharing space, story, food, and each other’s bodies, they form a space full of fluidity and possibility.

Goto problematizes the idea of reality in her novel: through many layers of revised stories, the question of what is true loses its importance. Eleanor Ty observes: “The various inserted discourses about stories, the truth, and the past reveal Goto’s concern not so much with accuracy, but with representation and the power of representation. Whose version of the truth gets told is more important than the question of what is truth” (2004: 158). Switching her attention from truth recovering or version comparing, Goto deliberately makes her stories conspicuously untrustworthy with loose ends, abrupt turnings, and multiple retellings. By constantly reminding the readers that the stories are heavily tainted with the narrators’ personal points of views, Goto lets her Asian Canadian protagonists gain the power of representation and imagination and her readers enjoy unconventional trajectories of a reading journey in a different temporal-spatial zone where her monsters can be what they are and live at ease in their rightful territories.

Inevitable translation in transnational homes

In Goto’s novels almost all the families are dysfunctional. In Chorus of Mushrooms, Naoe and Keiko stand against each other, holding very different views towards making a life in Canada as first-generation immigrants. They refuse to communicate in a common language, as Naoe acutely observes: “I speak my words in Japanese and my daughter will not hear them. The words that come from our ears, our mouths, they collide in the space between us” (1997: 4). In The Kappa Child, the abusive father torments the mother and their five daughters. The daughters grow up, each having to figure out ways to heal themselves. And several short stories in the collection Hopeful Monsters (2004) portray families with various problems: for example, in “Stinky Girl”, the main character claims: “some might even go as far as to say that I’m an emotionally crippled and mutually dependent member of a dysfunctional family” (2004: 37). In her various dysfunctional immigrant families, however, I observe that the failure to recognize their own transcultural situation and a lack of a conscious agreement on transcultural strategies are what cause the families to disintegrate.

The many dysfunctional families are in fact transnational, which means running the household and maintaining harmony for them is more complicated than for the mononational. Bill Ashcroft proposes that “[t]ransnation is the fluid, migrating outside of the state (conceptually and culturally as well as geographically) that begins within the nation” (2009: 477; emphasis in original). He then takes India as an example arguing it is a sound case for transnation since it is “where the ‘nation’ is the perpetual scene of translation ” (2009: 477; emphasis in original). I will, however, take a step beyond his definition by arguing that transnation begins at home, especially in Asian Canadian families where translation is inevitable. In Goto’s novels, her characters are Japanese Canadians who live in a home culture that is different from the larger Canadian society. For them, transnation is a day-to-day reality as they need to carry out translation at various levels. When family members do not agree on their transnational realities, problems often arise. The many dysfunctional families in Goto’s works enact different transnational politics, such as how to define the success of being an immigrant. What does being a Japanese Canadian mean in everyday life?

Just like transgender, transnation is not only a concept but also a critical tool or optic. With this transnational optics, translation also becomes more than a mechanical, one-directional process. Instead it transmutes into a practice that enables differences to be understood, even becoming a space for differences to clash and new energy to be generated. In Transnational Poetics, the editors observe: “translation allows for metamorphosis, change, and progress, resulting in a fluid, unfixed subjectivity” (Cuder-Domínguez et al., 2011: 139). Goto, by translating the apparent differences into points of convergence, stresses the importance of creativity, as she coins the term “trancreation” to replace “translation”.

Goto explains her usage of the word transcreation: “I say transcreated, because in my mind, translation is never a balanced equation. How can one language ever replace another? Translation can be a quick fix, a false solution, so easily served without the sekinin, the pure work involved, we only see the end results” (1996: 111). Not entirely unlike the existing transcreation theory in translation studies (Lal, 1972, 1996; Bassnett and Trivedi, 1999), Goto’s transcreation distinguishes itself by an emphasis on mutual, two-way transmutation instead of a single-direction movement from source to target language. Indeed, we see in Goto’s novels many a transcreated story that are not simply taken from their original culture and turned into another language, but rather interwoven between two worlds, taking in cultural, ideological, and philosophical elements that are liberating and empowering.

For example, in Chorus of Mushroom, Goto transcreates a Genesis story. It is based on the Japanese legend about a girl and a boy, Izanami and Izanagi, who — as two gods — create the world by pronouncing the words out loud (1997: 30). However, in Goto’s version, the girl makes the rules of the game of creation and forces the boy to take back his only contribution, “Let there be light!”, which echoes the biblical creation story. Playfully, Goto subverts Western master narratives, creating an alternative order, thus opening up possibilities. This also demonstrates how translation works both ways and that the source text could have an effect on the target language and culture.

Another example which demonstrates the beauty and power in transcreation is the use of Japanese onomatopoeia in Chorus of Mushrooms: “Sa! Sa! Sa!” — the sound of walking (1997: 64); “bata bata” of bare feet on hard wood floors (1997: 41); “che”, the sound to express contempt (1997: 48); “para para para” of petals of flowers falling off on the table (1997: 57); “Pichi pichi, chappu chappu”, the sound of the rain (1997: 6). Goto leaves these untranslated, according to Sally Ito, “because the reader, without necessarily knowing the language, will simply recognize the code because of its universality. The point is to emphasize similarities in codes and create points of cross-cultural connection between the reader and the text” (1994: 174). The onomatopoeia produces a special musicality in the novel, like soft background music. At the same time, the orientalist device actually work to disturb any notion of essentialized cultural identities. The untranslatable creates a space for transcultural appreciation.

Indeed, transculture, rather than assimilation and acculturation, is preferred as a working strategy by Goto’s Japanese Canadian characters. Nora Tunkel’s Transcultural Imaginaries outlines a promising approach to contemporary Canadian literature, namely a transcultural reading. ⁴ According to Tunkel:

the process leading to transculture […] necessitates the transgression of one’s own culture, the accessing of another culture that in return accesses one’s own. This process opens up a circle of “becoming” in which each individual discovers the “Other” that is not opposed to the self, but rather defines that part of identity that was not yet known. (2012: 109–110)

Contrary to the term “acculturation” which implies a movement in one direction — to transform the self in order to become alike and blend into the dominant culture — transculturation denotes a two-way process, a dynamic interaction and interchange between two cultures. Here, approaching the other is not for the purpose of securing self-knowledge and identification, but to enrich the self and better understand oneself, allowing oneself to open up and evolve.

In Chorus of Mushrooms, Naoe understands the mechanism of the stand-off between her daughter and herself: “We are locked together perfectly, each pushing against the other and nothing moves. Stubborn we are and will remain, no doubt” (1997: 13). As the mother and daughter hold opposing attitudes towards assimilation, their communication is held off: no information or affection, which could bring understanding and healing, can circulate. Naoe reflects as follows on Keiko’s linguistic choices: “the language she forms on her tongue is there for the wrong reasons. You cannot move to a foreign land and call that place home because you parrot the words around you. Find your home inside yourself first, I say. Let your home words grow out from the inside, not the outside in” (1997: 48). Naoe thinks that to make oneself at home one has to transculturate oneself: translate the self to the other and then from the enriched other translate back to what one was. In this way, one would become enhanced and more at ease. Keiko, by contrast, radically denounces everything Japanese at home, wishing that, by being totally acculturated, her family could become “real” Canadians.

Muriel says to Keiko about her lover not joining her on her trip: “He just got here, but he has to arrive. You can’t move on until you’ve arrived” (1997: 198). According to Muriel, being physically present in a country is far from being “arrived” which requires an initiation, marked by understanding what is happening in one’s own terms as well as making the self understood in the new world. Muriel just points out to Keiko who has been living in Canada for over thirty years: “No, Mom. You’re arriving still” (1997: 198). The translation process has to be multidirectional. Goto calls it “the sekinin” (1996: 111) — that is, the responsibility on the part of the immigrants to assert a presence in, and make an impact on, the country that they make their home.

Keiko fails to translate herself and her own culture into what she perceives as Canadian, even though she actively strives to copy the appearance of a perfect Canadian life. Since she speaks only English and allows no Japanese food at home, the one-directional process drains her. This is made evident when her mother, who symbolizes her home culture, disappears. Keiko collapses after Naoe’s disappearance, which suggests that cutting off oneself from one’s own culture entails the loss of inner resources. For want of a departing point, the immigrant can never fully arrive. And without this arrival, Keiko cannot make herself at home, let alone moving on. The latter stage would mean the ability to assert the rights of a citizen and relate to other immigrants, thus consciously resisting white supremacy by not submitting to its logic any more.

In the novel, it is through translation that the grandmother and granddaughter come together. They form a space where the end of one woman’s legend generates a new beginning. Interestingly, the trans-generational legacy materializes initially in the form of names. Naoe refuses to call her granddaughter Muriel (a version of Mary in English), a name given by Keiko who is suggested to be Catholic. Instead, Naoe calls Muriel Murasaki, which means purple. It is also the name of the first novelist in Japan, Murasaki Shikibu, who lived in the eleventh century. Her The Tale of Genji (Shikibu, 2003/1008) is not only a world classic but, more importantly, it is written by a woman. This knowledge serves to emphasize the significance of Muriel’s transformation into Murasaki — a storyteller. Naoe renames herself “Purple” when she becomes a bull rider. As Naoe explains: “The words are different, but in translation, they come together” (1997: 174). Therefore, despite their many differences, Naoe and Muriel come together: “Two women take up two different roads, two different journeys at different times. They are not travelling with a specific destination in mind but the women are walking toward the same place. Whether they meet or not is not relevant” (1997: 200; emphasis in original). Indeed, the women, Naoe and Murasaki, as well as their English versions Purple and Muriel, together with Murasaki the ancient Japanese writer, together making transings in the in-between world, morphing into one another while making progress in self-growth.

In The Kappa Child, the parents speak Japanese at home and the children speak both Japanese and English. There are many cases where Goto includes sentences in which “Japanese and English combine and collide” (Huber, 2011: 136). Examples are especially easy to find in the mother’s soft reprimanding of the second-generation children for using crude English words:

“Easter ni sucks te yuwanaino” (2001: 26). (Please do not say “Suck” at Easter.)

“Fuck te Easter ni yuwanaino” (2001: 93). (Please do not say “Fuck” at Easter.)

“Shut up te yuwanaino” (2001: 131). (Please do not say “Shut up”. [All my translations.])

Having to repeat the English words to specify the misdoing, the mother juxtaposes the different effects of the two languages. In this way, rude English words are filtered through the Japanese sentence structure, dismantling the dominant power of the English language as the Japanese words negate and erase the English words. For readers who have no knowledge of Japanese, familiar English elements, such as “Easter” and “suck”, are estranged in a Japanese context. This gives such readers an uncertain idea of what is going on, which also replicates the situation of many first-generation immigrants’ experiences with language barriers. However, instead of a reversed power relationship, we see that the mother’s words are feeble. She is unable to contain the violence in the English language, as her reprimand does not have the effect of making the child repent or correct their ways.

The narrator understands that her family are oppressed. However, she does not see that society has a role in causing their misfortune, because coercive practices are normalized by systematic enforcement. As a result, the narrator has mixed feelings towards the violent father who makes the women members of the family live in constant terror and fear. To some extent, she rationalizes the father’s violence as something necessary to make the girls tough enough to survive in a hostile environment. However, she is not fully convinced, and questions:

“You spoil them”, Dad spit. […] “If they aren’t tough, they won’t make it in this world”.

Make What? I thought. Whose World? (2001: 130)

The narrator comes close to realizing that she and her sisters naturally enjoy rights and privileges as Canadian citizens and should not have to do anything to earn those, for this is their world too. The father, however, is of an earlier generation and still adopts an oppositional point of view. In doing so, he complicates things unnecessarily by trying to make the girls tough, using crude methods.

Moreover, Goto is not simply seeking representation of behaviour in immigrant families but also using linguistic mixtures strategically in her narrative. Charlotte Sturgess suggests in her Redefining the Subject:

Yet, such juxtaposition of Japanese and English sites of speech — the displacing from one linguistic system to another — not only underlines difference but establishes “a bridge”, a relationship between two distinct systems which could be seen as a revisionary possibility. This hybridity combines two distinct cultural discourses and histories and thus creates a third possibility. (2003: 29)

Indeed, the mixing of languages and of stories from different cultures within one literary work generates a hybrid narrative, suitable for representing hybrid subjectivities. And this positions the two cultures as equivalent, interdependent and interconnected, which may look unfamiliar to monolingual readers, but is a realistic rendition of the situation for bilingual Asian Canadians.

The mixed cultural experiences and legacies are often problems for the children. A soft mother and a very strict father form a traditional Japanese family pattern. However, their children, the second generation who are raised in Canada, find it difficult to check in their luggage full of childhood trauma and home knowledge: “We drag around the baggage of our lives together. Even when we live apart. Baggage carried, with nowhere to check it in” (2001: 192). This metaphor of baggage functions to express the narrator’s mixed feelings towards her cultural heritage — it is a burden and at the same time a valuable possession that cannot be disposed of. Sandra Almeida argues: “The repeated reference to the baggage that has to be carried and cannot be checked in because home as one knows it no longer exists is a common trope in diasporic narratives. It refers to the condition of displacement experienced by migrant subjects in their experience of transit” (2009: 53). From the second generation onwards, home culture becomes culture at home, which is in perpetual contrast with the reality outside their households, and thus is burdensome. In the end, the kappa child was born out of the narrator, symbolizing a liberating process: namely, that ancient cultural legacies come back to life within the body of what is new and contemporary. The recreated and nurtured cultural legacy will then grow and “walk” on its own, thus no longer appearing as a piece of baggage that has to be dragged around.

Conclusions

In the article “Altered states” Roy Miki calls for change to the factors that are meaningful and formative to one’s identity, such as social and cultural formations:

We […] need to develop modes of understanding identity formations that can recognize these formations to be always complicit with the variables that act on us and through which we ourselves unfold in time to become social agents. It is in this unfolding that history as a mode of remembering returns as the time of becoming — a becoming in which the critical imagination, a powerful source of change and renewal, is able to conceive of alternative, more encompassing cultural transformations that can only be dreamed in a time of crisis. (2008: 156)

To some extent, Goto’s works embrace new modes of understanding the world, identity, and other people. She proposes a tripartite model to replace the binary system which seems to continue to impose violence and restraint on people, most obviously on those who do not fit clear-cut definitions and categories.

Goto’s works demonstrate the power and possibilities in trans-ideas, namely, transgender, transnation, translation, and transculture, and in the process new ideas and aesthetics are created in a series of “transings”. Her creation of transing space provides legitimacy and recognition for the in-betweeners, misfits, or transmonsters who, in her works, can walk across the boundaries freely. In many of the dysfunctional families she explores, the family members eventually recognize their need to position themselves politically in the country before they can understand each other in a transnational family where transnation is a day-to-day reality. As I have argued, the many trans-ideas are not only descriptive terms to summarize the current condition of socially marginalized peoples, such as racial minorities or non-heterosexual groups, but also critical tools that challenge the status quo, pushing forward for more liberating views.