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| Subjects: Cultural Studies, Literary Studies, Race & Ethnicity |
| Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series |
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2013 Honorable Mention, Asian American Studies Association's prize in Literary Studies
Why do black characters appear so frequently in Asian American literary works and Asian characters appear in African American literary works in the early twentieth century? Interracial Encounters attempts to answer this rather straightforward literary question, arguing that scenes depicting Black-Asian interactions, relationships, and conflicts capture the constitution of African American and Asian American identities as each group struggled to negotiate the racially exclusionary nature of American identity.
In this nuanced study, Julia H. Lee argues that the diversity and ambiguity that characterize these textual moments radically undermine the popular notion that the history of Afro-Asian relations can be reduced to a monolithic, media-friendly narrative, whether of cooperation or antagonism. Drawing on works by Charles Chesnutt, Wu Tingfang, Edith and Winnifred Eaton, Nella Larsen, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Younghill Kang, Interracial Encounters foregrounds how these reciprocal representations emerged from the nation’s pervasive pairing of the figure of the “Negro” and the “Asiatic” in oppositional, overlapping, or analogous relationships within a wide variety of popular, scientific, legal, and cultural discourses. Historicizing these interracial encounters within a national and global context highlights how multiple racial groups shaped the narrative of race and national identity in the early twentieth century, as well as how early twentieth century American literature emerged from that multiracial political context. |
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Julia H. Lee is an assistant professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. View all books by Julia Lee |
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| | “Interracial Encounters is a striking and original study of the
triangulation of race among whites, African Americans, and Asian Americans
during the turn of the twentieth century. By examining discourses surrounding
national identity, the railroad, and orientalism (among others), this book
includes new material on the historical development of race and traces the
relationship, mutual influence, coalition, and tension between members of the
African and Asian diasporas. It shows through painstaking juxtaposition of
historical context and literary analysis how both African American and Asian
American writers are profoundly conscious of the other racial minority and how
they negotiate nuanced political positions that go beyond the black and white
binary. The book provides deep insights not only into the texts studied but
also into the interracial dynamics during this period. In charting hitherto
unexplored ways of talking about race, it fills a significant gap in American
studies and paves the way for further interethnic research.” | | -King-Kok Cheung, University of California, Los Angeles |
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