English

HHow to Live Safely in a Science Fictional America: Charles Yu’s Immigrant Utopianism

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Huang examines Charles Yu’s use of the time travel narrative and the immigrant narrative in his debut novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010) to critically reimagine American utopianism. Yu deploys the device of a time machine to map, over time, the marginal and invisible spaces to which immigrants are all too often consigned. The quest reveals the crippling melancholy that undergirds one of the most powerful romances of American utopianism: The American Dream. The novel sheds light on how that melancholy ironically fuels immigrant attachments to the Dream and how that attachment can be severed without sacrificing a life-sustaining utopian outlook.

Publication Title

Race and Utopian Desire in American Literature and Society

Publication Date

2019

First Page

201

Last Page

219

ISBN

9783030194703

DOI

10.1007/978-3-030-19470-3_11

Keywords

The American Dream, Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, critical race studies, American utopianism, race, Chinese-American literature

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