Corporate Globalization and the Resistance to It in Linda Hogan’s People of the Whale and in Sheng Wu’s Poetry

Abstract

Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan and Taiwanese writer Sheng Wu are from two very different places in the world. Hogan, born in the upper west region of the United States, has written many novels and poems about Native North American peoples—especially the Chickasaw, whose traditional homelands are in what is now Oklahoma state in the southern central area of the United States. Wu, born in the county of Changhua in the central part of Taiwan, a small island located just east of mainland China and south of Japan and the Korean peninsula, has written extensively on his people and their place in Taiwan. Despite the differences in history, geography, and environment that separate them, Hogan and Wu share closely related environmental justice, or ecojustice, concerns and interests. These inspire much of their activism, public appearances, participation in conferences, and also their poetry and prose. This chapter addresses these interests as they relate to corporate globalization, a phenomenon closely tied to many environmental problems in the world today. Drawing mainly on the work of the ecojustice and ecofeminist activist and scholar Vandana Shiva, including the book Earth Democracy (2005), in which appears an extended discussion of corporate globalization, this chapter analyzes Hogan’s recent novel People of the Whale (2008) and five poems by Wu: “Loss,“ “Don’t Sigh When You Go Out,“ “I Can Only Write A Poem For You,“ “My Dear Hometown,“ and “Black Soil.“