Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South

2012 Honorable mention for the Book Award in Cultural Studies from the Association for Asian American Studies
Arkansas, 1943. The Deep South during the heart of Jim Crow-era segregation. A Japanese-American person boards a bus, and immediately is faced with a dilemma. Not white. Not black. Where to sit?

By elucidating the experience of interstitial ethnic groups such as Mexican, Asian, and Native Americans—groups that are held to be neither black nor white—Leslie Bow explores how the color line accommodated—or refused to accommodate—“other” ethnicities within a binary racial system. Analyzing pre- and post-1954 American literature, film, autobiography, government documents, ethnography, photographs, and popular culture, Bow investigates the ways in which racially “in-between” people and communities were brought to heel within the South’s prevailing cultural logic, while locating the interstitial as a site of cultural anxiety and negotiation.

Spanning the pre- to the post- segregation eras, Partly Colored traces the compelling history of “third race” individuals in the U.S. South, and in the process forces us to contend with the multiracial panorama that constitutes American culture and history.

"1100312781"
Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South

2012 Honorable mention for the Book Award in Cultural Studies from the Association for Asian American Studies
Arkansas, 1943. The Deep South during the heart of Jim Crow-era segregation. A Japanese-American person boards a bus, and immediately is faced with a dilemma. Not white. Not black. Where to sit?

By elucidating the experience of interstitial ethnic groups such as Mexican, Asian, and Native Americans—groups that are held to be neither black nor white—Leslie Bow explores how the color line accommodated—or refused to accommodate—“other” ethnicities within a binary racial system. Analyzing pre- and post-1954 American literature, film, autobiography, government documents, ethnography, photographs, and popular culture, Bow investigates the ways in which racially “in-between” people and communities were brought to heel within the South’s prevailing cultural logic, while locating the interstitial as a site of cultural anxiety and negotiation.

Spanning the pre- to the post- segregation eras, Partly Colored traces the compelling history of “third race” individuals in the U.S. South, and in the process forces us to contend with the multiracial panorama that constitutes American culture and history.

24.49 In Stock
Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South

Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South

by Leslie Bow
Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South

Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South

by Leslie Bow

eBook

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Overview

2012 Honorable mention for the Book Award in Cultural Studies from the Association for Asian American Studies
Arkansas, 1943. The Deep South during the heart of Jim Crow-era segregation. A Japanese-American person boards a bus, and immediately is faced with a dilemma. Not white. Not black. Where to sit?

By elucidating the experience of interstitial ethnic groups such as Mexican, Asian, and Native Americans—groups that are held to be neither black nor white—Leslie Bow explores how the color line accommodated—or refused to accommodate—“other” ethnicities within a binary racial system. Analyzing pre- and post-1954 American literature, film, autobiography, government documents, ethnography, photographs, and popular culture, Bow investigates the ways in which racially “in-between” people and communities were brought to heel within the South’s prevailing cultural logic, while locating the interstitial as a site of cultural anxiety and negotiation.

Spanning the pre- to the post- segregation eras, Partly Colored traces the compelling history of “third race” individuals in the U.S. South, and in the process forces us to contend with the multiracial panorama that constitutes American culture and history.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814787106
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication date: 04/01/2010
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 296
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Leslie Bow is Professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is author of Betrayal and Other Acts of Subversion.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  Introduction: Thinking Interstitially 1 Coloring between the Lines: Historiographies of Southern Anomaly 2 The Interstitial Indian: The Lumbee and Segregation’s Middle Caste 3 White Is and White Ain’t: Failed Approximation and Eruptions of Funk in Representations of the Chinese in the South 4 Anxieties of the ‘Partly Colored’  5 Productive Estrangement: Racial-Sexual Continuums in Asian American as Southern Literature 6 Transracial/Transgender: Analogies of Difference in Mai’s America Afterword: Continuums, Mobility, Places on the Train  Notes  Works Cited  Index  About the Author 

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Scrutinizing the bipolar axis of power separating black from white under the Jim Crowe system of segregation, Bow tracks the oppression and elision of those who are "partly colored" — here chiefly Asian Americans but with comparative nods to Native Americans and the binaries characterizing gender and sexuality . . . What she finds is not a "third space" apart from black or white but an eneven extension of repression of racial differences into which Asian American subjects are shoehorned or erased."-The Journal of American History,

"An impressive and well-researched interdisciplinary response." -MELUS,

"Bow's work is an imoprtant contribution to Asian American studies and southern literary criticism, and it brings together two forms of intellectual inquiry that have been treated as quite distinct by other scholars."-Krystyn R. Moon,The Journal of Southern History

"Partly Colored is a work that should be read not only by those interested in the South or regionalism but by all scholars interested in issues of racialization."-Jennifer Ho,Journal of Asian American Studies

"In a refreshingly wide-ranging study, Bow compares the circumstances of the Lumbee Indians with those of Asians—the two groups were not classified as black or white. The author considers the consequences of intermarriage in the racialization of Asians, as well as the roles of class and gender. Above all, she explores the rich interstitial possibilities of Asians' being "in-between" set categories. This stimulating read is suitable for a broad audience... Highly Recommended."-CHOICE

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