Intersectional environmentalism: Russell C. Leong’s “Azure in Angel City: A Blues Sketch, Part One”

ABSTRACT

Russell C. Leong 梁志英’s picaresque ballad, “Azure in Angel City: A Blues Sketch, Part One”, alludes to the Chinese classic saga, Journey to the West, to conjure up a modern odyssey that begins in the Los Angeles River and ends in Sri Lanka. It features four characters from Los Angeles, Cambodia, China, and Tongva land. By working together the quartet braves the world today: racism, poverty, police brutality, political corruption, rampant consumerism, ecological destruction, and spiritual void. The poem exemplifies what Leah Thomas calls “intersectional environmentalism”, whereby interdependent living among those most marginalized can be most sustainable. The ballad embeds allusions to the Bible, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Greek mythology, Tongva beliefs, and Sanskrit literature including Méghadúta, Ramayana, and Mahabharata. The article’s analysis shows how diasporic Chinese literature epitomizes world literature, and how cross-cultural coalition offers a solution, based on intersectionality and social interdependence, to our discordant world.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersectional environmentalism
• Los Angeles River
• monkey
• interdependence
• Chinese diaspora
• Russell C. Leong
• Asian American literature

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Since 2004, Asian Americanist writers and scholars including King-Kok Cheung, Marilyn Chin, Monica Chiu, Pin-chia Feng, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Marlon Hom, Guiyou Huang, Gish Jen, Elaine H. Kim, Rachel Lee, William Poy Lee, Yu-cheng Lee, Russell Leong, Fae Myenne Ng, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Te-hsing Shan, Sau-ling Cynthia Wong, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Helen Zia have been invited by the Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) Center to teach, lecture, or participate in conferences on Asian American literary studies sponsored or co-sponsored by BFSU. The Stateside and Taiwanese scholars interacted with People’s Republic of China (PRC) colleagues and students engaged in Asian American literary studies, notably Aimin Cheng 程爱民, Yingjian Guo 郭英剑, Xuepin Jin 金学品, Guicang Li 李贵苍, Jinzhao Li 李今朝, Kuilan Liu 刘葵兰, Wei Lu 陆薇, Zhiming Pan 潘志明, Ruoqian Pu 蒲若茜, Pingping Shi 石萍平, Lili Wang 王立礼, Yufeng Xue 薛玉凤, Chun Yang 杨春, Longhai Zhang 张龙海, Ziqing Zhang 张子清, Wenshu Zhao 赵文书, and Wei Zhou 周炜. In June 2009, Wu, in conjunction with Yingjian Guo 郭英剑 of Minzu University of China and Wei Lu 陆薇 of Beijing Language & Culture University co-hosted the National Conference on Asian American Literature. Guo has since launched a series entitled “Reimagining Asian American Literary Series in China” in 2017.

2. Many Chinese diasporic writers have derived literary inspiration from this Chinese classic. Examples include Patricia Chao’s Monkey King, Maxine Hong Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey, Timothy Mo’s Monkey King, Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese.

3. Email correspondence with Russell Leong, May 4, 2023.

4. I thank Xinhua Lu 卢新华 (whose own eponymous Cambodian protagonist in Wu Lou also misses a finger) for alerting me to the significance of a digital immolation.

5. As the editor of Asian American Sexualities: Dimensions of the Gay and Lesbian Experience (1995) Leong is a pioneer in addressing the importance of being inclusive and nondiscriminatory regarding gender and sexuality.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

King-Kok Cheung

King-Kok Cheung is UCLA research professor of English and US–China Education Trust (USCET) special advisor. She was University of California Education Abroad Program (UCEAP) Study Center director in China (2008–10, 2015–17), chair professor at Renmin University of China (2018–20); author of Articulate Silences 《静墨流声》 and Asian American Literature without Borders《文心无界》; editor of Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers and An Interethnic Companion of Asian American Literature and Asian American Literature: An Annotated Bibliography; coeditor of The Heath Anthology of American Literature; and recipient of the 2023 Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS) Lifetime Career Achievement Award.