Pussy, Paradise, and Elephants

Reading the Specter of Western Tourism and Leisure through Thai and Hawaiian Literature

Abstract

“Exoticized” lands of leisure – specifically Thailand and Hawai’i – are sexualized and commodified as heteronormative destinations for Western and “First World” consumption. In this essay, I am particularly interested in the ways that local communities culturally reimagine these “porno-tropical” locations as sites to perform marginally local voices and identities while contesting perverse visions of “paradise” created by Western desires. To do so, I will contextualize and focus on two fictional pieces – Sightseeing (2005) by Rattawut Lapcharoensap and This Is Paradise (2013) by Kristiana Kahakauwila – that undertake the overlapping discourses of leisure, romance, militourism, and ideas of “paradise” as emerging sites of waste and destruction in the wake of Western tourism and consumption. Drawing upon the political nature of mess and a particular chapter from each one of these book, I aim to think about how “exoticized” lands (particularly Hawai’i and the tropical beach landscapes of Thailand) are archived by locals as vantage points for promoting social justice and ethnic responsibility. Using pieces from the fictional accounts of Lapcharoensap and Kahakauwila, I seek to compare the ways that writers queer the heteronormative approaches to lands and peoples that are gendered and sexually-racialized by the West – especially by the recreational and imperial forces of U.S. militourism. My goal is to foreground how these authors rewrite their communities back into the seemingly post- apocalyptic landscapes of paradise, confronting the ways that the “native” and local identities are superficially erased from the foreigners’ touristic view. Through such a discussion, my analysis hopes to uncover how contemporary authors use literature and culture to both navigate their identities as well as dismiss, or “mess-up”, the fantasies of paradise, tranquillity, and leisure created by Western desires of exotification and of the tropical “other”.