Abstract
This dissertation is an attempt to tell a modest yet resonating story that is at once literary, critical, and personal through the contemporary global novels written in English that span the places surrounding the Pacific Ocean.
As a literary story, this project reads and finds unexpected connections among novels which talk about the experiences of crossing the oceans, ranging from North and South Americas, Australia, Southeast Asia, and the far East in Russia. As a critical story, it says that a migration narrative is not always massive, historical, and impersonal but can be small, sensuous, and personal as you would expect in nature writings. As a personal story, it follows and conjures up my memories of Pacific-crossing which shaped how I view, read, and understand the experiences of moving around the world which may or may not lead to finding new homes and relationships.
As you can see, these three stories are not exclusive. Rather, they feed each other. Each becomes a new entry point to the others, often showing that things that appear entirely unrelated can connect—such as the quiet and uneventful lives in the Kamchatka peninsula and whimsical and fantastical events in the Brazilian rainforest; such as my love for interior design and Michelle de Kretser’s multifaceted ocean-crossing story. All essays in this project contain such apparently random connections that are found in words, colors, sounds, and even smells.
So when it came to tell this porous yet connected story, it made most sense that I chose a way that best reflected such porous-woven nature which was literally not literal. I decided to make a website and populate it with words, images, and sounds, just like the story that I wanted to tell. And just like this story connected memories and people that were ocean apart, a website would reach readers who were ocean apart from me.
There is no table of contents to guide you from the beginning to end. There is no right order to read. You can close your eyes and start from wherever your blind tap landed. Let that first tap lead you to the next. And the next. That is how memories move in us.