Xiamara Hohman

In my dissertation, “China-making”: American Poetry and Chinese Mythology, I argue that by appropriating Chinese mythologies, U.S. writers and artists have colonized the imaginations of a generation of Americans and that we can see this payout in U.S. communities of Chinese immigrants, geopolitical relations, and literary trends. As I am defining it, a myth is a narrative that gives meaning to a lived experience. It explains what we commemorate and worship and renders meaningful both celebration and life. In the first half of my dissertation, I discuss the ways in which Chinese myths and cultural practices have been appropriated by American poets and artists of non-Chinese descent in order to contend with normative constructions of gender and femininity and racism against Black Americans. I then pivot to the ways in which American poets’ engagement with East Asian spiritual practices produced a cognitive disconnect that allowed the American readership to abstract itself from the plight of Chinese immigrants to the United States, even as it produced an interest in the literature, religion, and mythology of classical China.