The Tales of Two Peninsulas: Remaking National Myth and Remapping the US Military Base Network in Fox Gir l (2002) and Soucouyant (2007)

This essay juxtaposes the US military bases located at the opposite ends of the Pacific, by reading together two fictional accounts of military prostitution—one set in Busan, a port city south of the Korean Peninsula and the other in Chaguaramas of Trinidad. Both Nora Okja Keller's Fox Girl (2002) and David Chariandy's Soucouyant (2007) turn to traditional children's folktales in recounting the history of military prostitution that is carefully carved out from each peninsula's postwar nation-building discourse. By recentering the transgressive movements of the folk figures who are prominent in the East Asian and Afro-Caribbean imaginary, the novels reimagine the geographic landscapes of each peninsula and spotlight the alternative routes of resistance in the oceanic and atmospheric. Their remaking of the vernacular tales of the soucouyant and nine-tailed fox, gumiho , challenges the discursive legacies of the US "military colony" that silence the histories of military prostitution and interrogates the developmentalist narratives underpinning the national myths.