Redressing immigration: folklore, cross-dressing, and un/documented immigration in Sui Sin Far's Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of orange

This project examines the intersections between sexual/cultural cross-dressing and un/documented immigration from the point of view of folklore and immigration studies using Sui Sin Far's short story collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Karen Tei Yamashita's novel Tropic of Orange. Using the lenses of folklore theory and cross-dressing highlights aspects of immigration (and its intersection with gender and race) that are otherwise missed; it is necessary to examine the evolving ways in which fictionalized cross-dressers re-craft and occupy the spaces from which they are barred in order to address and redress questions of immigration today. Incorporating anthropology, history, folkloristics, and gender studies, this project shows that historical forms of cross-dressing and immigration lead to the development of unstable identities and pressures to "re-dress" and return to one's original space. More recent studies about gender, however, reveal a historical change in how cross-dressers negotiate their identities and the space(s) they inhabit. Therefore, it is crucial to inspect cross-dressing and immigration as both historical and contemporary phenomena. While Mrs. Spring Fragrance (published in 1912) represents more conventional ideas of cross-dressing and immigration, Tropic of Orange (published in 1997) offers alternative ways to navigate borders, immigration, and identity by using these concepts more playfully and self-consciously. Although sexual/cultural cross-dressing and un/documented immigration are not the same in every case, there are enough similarities between the two to warrant investigating whether some of the solutions reached by modern cross-dressers and gender-ambiguous people might not also help un/documented immigrants to re-negotiate their status, identities, and spaces in the midst of an unstable and at times hostile environment. In fact, an examination of such intersections can address and redress immigration by changing the perceptions of how, and the contexts in which, people view immigration and borders. Thus, this project contends that it is the combination of folkloristics, gender and immigration studies, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, and Tropic of Orange together that precipitates such a reading.