Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange and Chaos Theory

In addressing Yamashita’s depiction of Los Angeles as interzone, a brimming multiethnic metropolis at once marked by its speed, its migrant populations, its politics of class and gender, Hsu brings chaos theory to bear as a way into understanding the novel. She explores the seven different voices that speak to the freneticism of both human and highway traffic in the city, with the Harbor Freeway as literal but also figurative centre. Chaos theory, she argues, offers a means of entry into the novel’s prime metaphors – the movement north of the actual tropic of cancer and the massive traffic standstill.