Interracial Encounters: Reciprocal Representations in African and Asian American Literatures, 1896-1937

Julia H. Lee

Published by New York University Press 2011

Interracial Encounters

Reciprocal Representations in African and Asian American Literatures, 1896-1937

Julia H. Lee

Volume 2 in the series American Literatures Initiative

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814752555.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

2013 Honorable Mention, Asian American Studies Association's prize in Literary Studies

Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series

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.

Author / Editor information

Lee Julia H. :

Julia H. Lee is Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California at Irvine and author of Interracial Encounters: Reciprocal Representations in African and Asian American Literatures, 1896–1937, Understanding Maxine Hong Kingston, and The Racial Railroad

Reviews

Lee's study is an invaluable addition to minority literature studies in large part because of her decision to have texts from two distinct traditions enter into conversation with one another. Her approach not only opens up these individual texts in new and exciting ways, but it also enriches and expands the understanding of race that is at their centers in ways that go beyond the traditional borders of a black and white binary.

King-Kok Cheung,University of California, Los Angeles:
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.

Caroline H. Yang:
Lee's close reading of the Plessy case speaks to her book's methodological interventions. It shows the importance of literary studies in not just historical analyses of texts that have been read heretofore as concerning only blacks and whites but also Afro-Asian critique....Quite simply, the reading practice developed in Lee's book is original and insightful, and it brings to light figures and forms in late-nineteenth century and early twentieth century literatures that have often been rendered as insignificant nonpresence unrelated to other racialized figures.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
1 / Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2 / The “Negro Problem” and the “Yellow Peril”: Early Twentieth-Century America’s Views on Blacks and Asians Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	22
3 / Estrangement on a Train: Race and Narratives of American Identity in The Marrow of Tradition and America through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	48
4 / The Eaton Sisters Go to Jamaica Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
5 / Quicksand and the Racial Aesthetics of Chinoiserie Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	114
6 / Nation, Narration, and the Afro-Asian Encounter in W. E. B. Du Bois’s Dark Princess and Younghill Kang’s East Goes West Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	138
7 / Coda Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221

Language: English
Publisher: New York University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: October 1, 2011
ISBN: 9780814752579