Landscapes of beauty and plunder
Japanese American flower growers and an elite public garden in Los Angeles
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5004113 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Wendy Cheng (Scripps College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 699-717 |
| Publication date | 2020-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263775820909836 |
| OpenAlex | W3010507431 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 22 |
In 1942, Los Angeles newspaper publisher Elias Manchester Boddy purchased the nursery stock of at least three Japanese-owned nurseries. Two grower families, the Yoshimuras and the Uyematsus, were forced to sell their life's work prior to their indefinite incarceration by the U.S. government during the Second World War. These plants, including rare and unique breeds of camellias, became the basis of what is now Descanso Gardens, a celebrated public garden. In this article, I examine Boddy's transactions as an instance of racial plunder: a morally and affectively inflected act of theft structured by racism that is as much about the act's preconditions and afterlives as it is about the act itself. Using archival research, oral histories, and interviews with family members, I foreground the experiences and perspectives of the Japanese American families across multiple generations and landscapes, rather than a single perspective and defining moment. In doing so, a story emerges involving alternative worldviews forged through and superseding racism and dispossession as well as heterogenous relationships to land not dictated by capitalist logics. In detailing the specifics of the transactions, this work also challenges the silences and misrepresentations that exculpate those who benefited from Internment
Beauty · Elite · Government (linguistics · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · American Environmental and Regional History · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities · Gender Studies · History · Law
Japanese Americans
The White Possessive
Lie Of The Land
Japanese Americans
The Filipino Primitive
Rightlessness
Between Two Empires
Cartographies of Violence
A Tragedy of Democracy
Empire's Tracks
Critical Ethnic Studies
Colonial Lives of Property
Rethinking Environmental Racism
Poetics of relation
Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native
The Extractive Zone
Removal and Return
The Nature of California
The Beauty and Menace of the Japanese Cherry Trees
The Ground Not Given
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,6 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2025 (5) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |