The "retinal-world" of Roy Kiyooka’s Wheels

Abstract

This paper discusses how Roy Kiyooka’s Wheels: A Trip Thru Honshu’s Backcountry processes issues of racialization and the nation through different visual modes—namely, the related operations of seeing, being seen, and showing. I argue that the text posits vision as perceptual practice, a notion I use to think through the framing process of Asian Canadian literature and cultural politics, as well as Kiyooka’s relationship to Japan vis-à-vis transpacific histories of imperialism, violence, and memory.