Retelling History and Making Stories: Representing San Francisco’s International Hotel

This thesis investigates San Francisco’s International Hotel, also known as the I-Hotel, through specific historical, literary, and spatial representations. It shows how these representations frame the stories of the International Hotel, assist in keeping alive conversations about specific historical events, and/or unsettle our remembrance of them. Chapter One offers an overview of the Asian American movement, the International Hotel, its anti-eviction movement (1968-1977), its fall-and-rise, and explains why this particular history has been in some respects hidden and erased. Chapter Two focuses on historical representations of the International Hotel anti-eviction movement. It pays particular attention to the conflicts and disagreements in the movement as it took place as well as in subsequent accounts that attempt to tell this particular history to explore what constitutes an adequate way of representing the International Hotel in and for the present. Chapter Three explores literary representations of the International Hotel with specific focus on Karen Tei Yamashita’s novel I Hotel (2010). It analyzes how Yamashita’s narrative structure could offer readers an opportunity to see the anti-eviction movement through various lenses and how I Hotel could serve as a medium to reinforce and perhaps unsettle the remembrance of this particular history. Chapter Four turns to the International Hotel Manilatown Center, a commemorative site located on the ground floor of the newly built International Hotel. It pays especial attention to how the displays and exhibitions in the Center have managed to keep alive the memories of the International Hotel; render them visible and in tangible ways; and recreate them for the present and future generations. Drawing on the work of David Palumbo-Liu, it shows how community-based learning could serve as an effective way to extend and move forward the memories of the I-Hotel. Chapter Five concludes this thesis and asks: what would it mean to extend the implications of these varied representations to our lives here in Taiwan? By drawing attention to the forced eviction of residents and demolition of the Huaguang Community in Taipei in 2013, it suggests that the struggle over the International Hotel in San Francisco can stand as one case among many to help us better understand some of the challenges we are now facing here in Taiwan.