The Pacific is dense, layered, vast. It is full, not just of creatures beautiful and sublime but also histories of war, nuclear testing, colonial settlement, ecological disruption, and capitalist extraction. Moreover, it is rich in stories, meaning, and life shared among humans and nonhumans. As the twenty-first century unfolds, will the Pacific offer devastation or life?
Erin Suzuki's Ocean Passages: Navigating Pacific Islander and Asian American Literatures is a powerful advocate of the latter. Suzuki underscores the importance of engaging Native studies and Indigenous peoples—not as neglected areas and objects of study but as subjects of knowledge and invaluable kin. The book illuminates how literary expression vitalizes alternative forms of being, relation, and futurity. The task is not to establish what transpacific studies should be; Suzuki aspires to build community, not flash academic showmanship. Ocean Passages exemplifies how transpacific studies might foster a vibrant Pacific in the face of ruination....