With a Foreword by Vijay Prashad and an Afterword by Gary OkihiroHow might we understand yellowface performances by African Americans in 1930s swing adaptations of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, Paul Robeson's support of Asian and Asian American struggles, or the absorption of hip hop by Asian American youth culture?AfroAsian Encounters is the first anthology to look at the mutual influence of and relationships between members of the African and Asian diasporas. While these two groups have often been thought of as occupying incommensurate, if not opposing, cultural and political positions, scholars from history, literature, media, and the visual arts here trace their interconnections and interactions, as well as the tensions between the two groups that sometimes arise. AfroAsian Encounters probes beyond popular culture to trace the historical lineage of these coalitions from the late nineteenth century to the present.A foreword by Vijay Prashad sets the volume in the context of the Bandung conference half a century ago, and an afterword by Gary Okihiro charts the contours of a "Black Pacific." From the history of Japanese jazz composers to the current popularity of black/Asian "buddy films" like Rush Hour, AfroAsian Encounters is a groundbreaking intervention into studies of race and ethnicity and a crucial look at the shifting meaning of race in the twenty-first century.
AcknowledgmentsForeword: "Bandung Is Done"Vijay PrashadIntroduction: AfroAsian EncountersHeike Raphael-Hernandez and Shannon SteenPart I Positioning AfroAsian Racial Identities1 "A Race So Different from Our Own"Sanda Mayzaw Lwin2 Crossings in Prose: Jade Snow Wong and the Demand for a New Kind of Expert Cynthia Tolentino3 Complicating Racial Binaries: Asian Canadians and African Canadians as Visible Minorities Eleanor Ty4 One People, One Nation? Creolization and Its Tensions in Trinidadian and Guyanese Fiction Lourdes Lopez Ropero5 Black-and-Tan Fantasies: Interracial Contact between Blacks and South Asians in Film Samir DayalPart II Confronting the Color Hierarchy6 "It Takes Some Time to Learn the Right Words"Heike Raphael-Hernandez7 Chutney, Metissage, and Other Mixed MetaphorsContexts Gita Rajan8 These Are the BreaksOliver WangPart III Performing AfroAsian Identities9 Racing American ModernityShannon Steen10 Black Bodies/Yellow MasksDeborah Elizabeth Whaley11 The Rush Hour of Black/Asian Coalitions?Mita Banerjee12 Performing Postmodernist PassingCathy Covell WaegnerPart IV Celebrating Unity13 Persisting SolidaritiesBill V. Mullen14 Internationalism and JusticeGreg Robinson15 "Jazz That Eats Rice"David W. Stowe16 Kickin' the White Man's AssFred HoAfterword: Toward a Black Paci?c Gary Y. OkihiroAbout the Contributors Index
