Interracial Encounters

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

• Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 2 The "Negro Problem" and the "Yellow Peril": Early Twentieth-Century America's Views on Blacks and Asians 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 4 The Eaton Sisters Go to Jamaica 5 Quicksand and the Racial Aesthetics of Chinoiserie6 Nation, Narration, and the Afro-Asian Encounter in W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Princess and Younghill Kang's East Goes West 7 Coda Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

"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." - Caroline H. Yang (Journal of Asian American Studies) "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 "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." (Journal of American Culture)