“A child isn’t born bitter”: (In)human Relations and Monstrous Affects in Hiromi Goto’s The Kappa Child

Abstract

This article presents an intersectional reading of Hiromi Goto’s The Kappa Child (2001) through the lens of Affect Theory. Particularly, I draw from Sara Ahmed’s The Promise of Happiness and Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism to analyze the role these notions play in the novel. I focus on the economy of affects that circulates among the characters and the affective significance of their interactions as well as the novel’s engagement with Ahmed’s notion of the promise of happiness and Berlant’s cruel optimism, specifically in relation to female, racialized, and migrant subjects both at a personal level and in the context of the settler colonial nation. My main argument is that the affects and expectations presented in the novel are monstrous. I defend that the protagonist’s affective monstrosity is a direct consequence of her abusive childhood as a racialized migrant in the Canadian Prairies and that choosing to let go of her expectations leads to emotional healing and opens new possibilities towards happiness.

Keywords

• affect theory
• hiromi goto
• promise of happiness
• cruel optimism
• trauma
• the kappa child
• monstrosity