戰爭新娘、纏捲、共生：尾關《天生萬物》的亞美農業書寫

War Bride, Entanglements, and Symbiosis: Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation and Asian American Agrarian Writing

本文探討尾關小說《天生萬物》的亞美農業敘述，我援引多物種民族誌學者對農業的看法，將尾關的小說放入美國農本敘事的沿革當中，彰顯尾關對基改農糧的思考，剖析本書連結自然與文化的方式，及敘事創新。本書有兩個互相交錯的敘事結構，一個顯性，一個隱性。顯性敘事以毒物論述檢視農民的處境、檢視基改和反基改的爭議，透過根莖狀敘述，連結諸多角色的聲音與觀點，形成一個根系龐雜的敘事網絡，探討在生物科技下，人與人以及人與物種共生之可能方式。隱性故事的蔓生鍊結將主要角色與種子纏繞捲進一個互相生成的遭逢，將小說的敘述格局擴張到一個跨物種繼承的想像。在這個敘事支線中，尾關不僅揭露了戰爭新娘議題，通過危脆主體的勾勒，重新梳理亞美的認同政治，也將亞裔母女敘事放在物種遭逢的脈絡下重新演繹，以植物與種子仲介族裔傳承，為亞美書寫開出新的想像空間。《天生萬物》因此在諸多層面上同時操作創新，將農本敘事帶到一個新的高度。

This article reads Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation (2003) as an Asian American agrarian writing. Drawing upon multispecies ethnography, I consider farming as a contact zone between humans and other species. I place the novel in the context of American agrarian writing and highlight Ozeki’s reflections on the critiques of GMOs as well as her innovative ways in which the connections between culture and nature are narrated. The novel consists of two narrative strands, one manifest, the other shadowed. The manifest narrative examines the agrarian community through toxic discourse, the controversy of GMOs and equally controversial anti-GMOs movements. Combining voices and perspectives from multiple characters, the manifest narrative forms a rhizome, unfolding various forms of symbiosis between humans as well as between humans and other species. The shadowed narrative entangles characters and plant species into moments of encounters, extending the narrative toward including an imaginary of cross-species inheritance and symbiosis. With this, Ozeki reveals the precarious lifeworld of the Japanese war brides hitherto underrepresented, and rewrites the Asian American mother-daughter narrative as accomplished through the mediation of plants and seeds. All Over Creation thus reinvents agrarian writing, while reconfiguring the subject of war bride in Asian American narratives.