Home reconsidered in transnational fiction: walking as alternative/oppositional mobility and landscape claiming in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange

Abstract

This article is greatly inspired by the mobilities paradigm in its investigation of the transnational novel Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita by paying attention to a particular form of mobility, walking, practiced by the marginalized migrants in the landscapes. It argues that the novel reveals walking firstly as an alternative mobility for those migrants to claim for the visibility of the overlooked landscapes where they inhabit; secondly as an imposed form of mobility on the migrants, who perceive mobility injustice in the construction of the taken for granted landscape, the freeway; and thirdly as an oppositional mobility to be used by the migrants to claim landscape and home. In this way, transnational fiction would enrich the studies on walking by drawing attention to the connection between walking, marginalized migrants and landscapes, taking into consideration mobility (in)justice; it would also contribute to the exploration of various forms of oppositional mobilities; but most important of all, it would add one more layer to the discussion about mobility by connecting the exploration of mobility to that of landscape construction and finally to the envisioning of a new approach to home.

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