This course is inspired by Rita Wong’s “Decolonizasian: Reading Asian and First Nations Relations in Literature” and Emma LaRocque’s “Teaching Aboriginal Literature: The Discourse of Margins and Mainstreams.” The discussion will focus on textual relations between Aboriginal and Asian Canadian fiction within the context of alternative configurations of imagined community and cross-cultural relations. Themes that we will explore include traumatized memory, decolonization, reconciliation, transracial adoption, sexualities, and perceptions of the land. Narrative modes to be examined include the gothic, storytelling, and trickster aesthetic. While some texts such as Sky Lee’s  Disappearing Moon Café  and Tamai Kobayashi’s  Exile and the Heart  portray relationships between those who have been racialized as “Asian” and those who have been racialized as “Aboriginal,” Joy Kogawa’s  Obasan  and Ruby Slipperjack’s  Silent Words  share certain themes and modes, and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas celebrates a new form of art with his Haida manga. In its attempt to examine the relationship between indigeneity and diaspora, the course will also be concerned with the limitations of affiliative politics. As Daniel Heath Justice observes: “the opportunities for non-Natives in Canada come as a consequence of the land loss, resource expropriation, social upheaval, and political repression of Aboriginal peoples” (“The Necessity of Nationhood: Affirming the Sovereignty of Indigenous National Literatures”). Other texts likely to be included are Kevin Chong’s  Baroque-a-nova , Drew Hayden Taylor’s  Motorcycles & Sweetgrass,  Richard Wagamese’s  Keeper’n Me , Ting-Xing Ye’s  Throwaway Daughter , Lee Maracle’s  Ravensong , Larissa Lai’s  When Fox Is a Thousand , Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach, and Judy Fong Bates’s  Midnight at the Dragon Café ..