The nightmares of the heteronormative

Abstract

Race and sexuality have always intersected in African‐American racial formation. In this article, I argue that this intersection has inspired certain epistemological, political, economic and cultural formations. In terms of epistemology, American sociology and African‐American literature have historically addressed the connections between race and sexuality. Both were interested in the ways that African‐American racial formation transgressed ideal heterosexual and patriarchal boundaries. As far as cultural formations were concerned, such transgressions materially and symbolically aligned African‐American racial formation with homosexuality. Attending to the political and economic effect of this alignment, I maintain that it helped to articulate African‐American racial difference and worked to exclude African‐Americans from the privileges of state and capital. Thus, the article argues that African‐American racial subordination can best be understood as it converges with heteronormative and patriarchal modes of regulation and exclusion. After showing how the most prominent sociology during the 1940s (Gunnar Myrdal's American Dilemma: The Negro and American Democracy) marked African‐Americans as pathologically heterosexual, I go on to read James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain to determine how the alignment between blackness and homosexuality suggests alternative and oppositional epistemological, cultural and political practices.     

Hemispheric Visions and Border Divisions: Differential Decolonizations at the US National Museum of the American Indian

Abstract

While many populations have suffered unique forms of colonial oppression, what these varying populations seem to share is an understanding of the importance of community support and cultural continuity in the face of struggle. Drawing on notions of differential oppositional consciousness and decolonization, this article examines the US National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC in light of its efforts to represent a hemispheric indigeneity. The Our Lives gallery exhibit co-curated by the Campo Band of Kumeyaay Indians (whose aboriginal lands straddle the border between the US and Mexico) is analyzed alongside the author’s personal reflections of her encounters with the NMAI as a US Chicana/Latina subject. The article urges scholars to recognize how they have been differ entially positioned against power and, furthermore, to acknowledge how and when efforts to decolonize may result in the re-colonization of another already marginalized group. This project asserts that the strength of alliances may not always be built on sameness, but perhaps can be built out of differences.     

Learning Racial Literacy While Navigating White Social Studies

Abstract

How do children develop racial literacy? How do they make sense of and respond to the master narratives of race and racism? What role does elementary social studies education play in children’s racial literacy development? I explored these questions as a parent–researcher, inquiring how my child, an Asian American elementary student, develops racial literacy as she learns U.S. history at school. In the following, I first situate my inquiry within the literature on social studies education from a critical race perspective. Next, I delineate my positionality as a critical race motherscholar and the rationale for studying my own child. Last, I present the findings from my inquiry and discuss its implications for elementary social studies education.     

Where Do Our Children Fit In?: White Mothering of Asian Children and the Construction of Racial and Ethnic Identities

Abstract

This research investigates white adoptive mothers' mothering related to their adopted children's racial and ethnic socialization. Drawing upon in-depth face-to face interviews with thirty-eight women who have adopted children from China, South Korea or the Philippines, this paper first examines why white mothers de cided to adopt an Asian child and then explores mothering strategies for deal ing with their children's racial and ethnic identity formation. The study contrasts "colorblind mothering," which I also call the "assimilative fitting-in strategy," and "color-conscious mothering," also referred to as the "birth-culture fitting-in strategy." This study also found significant variations in color-conscious adoptive mothers' mothering based in part on the level of the family's embracement of the adopted child's birth culture and on the level of social networking with and outreach to not only other adoptive families but also Asian or Asian American communities. Finally this study critically reviews how race matters to white adoptive mothers.     

Writing of home and home of writing Chinese American diaspora and literary imagination

Abstract

The Silent Traveller's Hong Kong Zhuzhi Poems (1972) by Chiang Yee provides an interesting case for study in relation to Asian American literary theory aesthetics for at least the following three reasons: First, Chiang's poems comment on the 'idiosyncratic phenomena' in Hong Kong, and the ambiguity and sometimes contradictions in his comments allow us to explore the issues of assimilation and Americanization and to get a good understanding of the meaning of 'home' to a Chinese diasporic poet. Second, utilization of the zhuzhi form, a tradition that has been largely abandoned in modern China, suggests the intrinsic value of the cultural tradition and emotional or psychological satisfaction to a Chinese diaspora. Chiang's tenacious adherence to the cultural tradition is a reflection of his yearning for an imaginary 'home'. Third, the use of the Chinese language underlines the poet's Chinese cultural sensitivity. A discussion of the form, content, and language of these poems illustrates the complexity of Asian American cultural and ethnic identity and the significance of the imaginary 'home' – a construction through writing where a diaspora may find a haven in displacement.     

Pulping the Black Atlantic: Chester Himes’ A Case of Rape and the Limits of Expatriation

Abstract

This article examines the early expatriate career of Chester Himes, and his overlooked Paris-set novella A Case of Rape (1956). Scholars have identified postwar Paris as the locus of a ‘Black Atlantic’ cosmopolitanism that allowed African American writers to transcend American racial and literary regimes, and in particular the stigma of black ‘protest’ fiction. By contrast, this article argues that Himes’ exile was paradoxical; defined by an exchange, rather than an ‘exceeding’ of American racial and literary stigmas. First, I explore the fetishistic racial politics that energized the Left Bank’s construction of black expatriates as symbols of individualist, masculine, and specifically western transgression. Second, I examine the way in which A Case of Rape, and its narrative of the false conviction of four African American expatriates for rape, dramatizes this paradox. With supreme irony, the novella sees the expatriate celebrity merge with a central symbol of the African American ‘protest’ novel: the black male rapist of white women. Finally, I argue that A Case of Rape is of particular importance for the ways in which it anticipates Himes’ move into pulp fiction. Like his later detective series, A Case of Rape captures Himes’ own disillusionment with conventional notions of authorial autonomy, and literary instrumentality. I conclude that expatriation worked to galvanize, rather than displace, Himes’ interest in the overdetermination of African American literature within dominant western racial discourses.     

EN-COUNTERING THE OTHER DISCOURSE OF CHICANO-MEXICANO DIFFERENCE

In this period in which Mexicans in the borderlands are being constructed as aliens and sources of cheap deportable labour (not makes of intellectual traditions which encourage transnational area studies and theoretical reflections in the US), it is important to remember that not only people but also ideas cross Mexican–American borders. It is doubly important to scrutinize those intellectual movements that cross state-sanctioned borders while restricting social possibilities and movements.

In this article I consciously assume this charge by focusing critical attention on an influential venue of transnational(ist) travel (On the road to Octavio Paz/On the Road to Chicano) within cultural productions that laid the foundation for an ‘alternative’ Chicano studies epistemology and tradition in the early 1970s. Drawing on disparate cultural studies traditions and the deconstructive insights of Chicana feminists and activists, I encounter the patriarchal dynamics, conceptual idioms, political investments (nationalism/familism) and essentialist difference that undergirded this intellectual formation and its construction of Chicana/o identity. In the process I argue that this formation not only rendered the desired form of political exceptionalism, but also served to distance Chicanas/os from the political and intellectual claims of Chicanas, Chicana feminists and other women and people of colour. However, as my concluding section demonstrates, this circulation of theories was – to use the language of Clifford – ‘cut across’, interrupted and contested by other theories in circulation during the same period that offered different claims to representation, different forms of transnational travel, and other possibilities for imagining social political and intellectual relations.     

'War Is Not a Map': Irish America,Transnationalism, and Joseph O'Connor's Redemption Falls

Abstract

This essay argues for a transnational reading of Irish novelist Joseph O'Connor's Redemption Falls (2007). It contends that O'Connor's revisiting of the period of the American Civil War and its aftermath begs all sorts of questions regarding Ireland and Irish America's historical and contemporary transnational intercessions and responsibilities. As Ireland underwent a period of unparalleled economic prosperity beginning in the mid-1990s, which most commentators attribute to successive Irish governments' commitment to globalization, it began to face new and pressing challenges in relation to its involvement with the rest of the world, particularly with regard to its stance on neutrality and recent immigrants to Ireland. I conclude that Redemption Falls reveals the complexity of Irish and Irish Americans' relationship to notions of whiteness and (racial) innocence and challenges readers to consider how Ireland will conduct its future relations with the global community both within and beyond its borders.     

The “New Mestiza,” the Old Mestizos: Contrasting Discourses on Mestizaje*

This article analyzes varying, inconsistent, representations of “mestizaje” (generally construed as racial or cultural mixing in the Americas) deriving from different historical settings and ideological frameworks. It particularly focuses on what I here term “old mestizaje,” summarized in the writings of Latin American intellectuals of the first quarter of the twentieth century, such as Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos (The Cosmic Race); and “new mestizaje,” articulated in the works of such contemporary thinkers as Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldúa (Borderlands/La Frontera: The NewMestiza). The center piece of the article is the contradictions and fractures between old and new discourses in terms of their underlying views of race, identity, and “destiny.” It examines the links of old mestizaje with essentialist, Social Darwinist, concepts, and the foundations of new mestizaje on a critical cultural studies paradigm. I propose that various aspects of old mestizaje infused hegemonic racial ideologies throughout Latin America and engendered a form of “color blindness” that obscured pervasive racial inequalities in the region.     

Racial and Sexual Identities of Asian American Gay Men

ABSTRACT

This paper reports results of two studies about the racial and sexual identities of Asian American gay men. In the first study, 32 Asian American gay men completed measures assessing racial and sexual identity attitudes. Results suggested that Assimilationists had the most negative sexual identity attitudes, followed by Marginalists and Separationists, with Integrationists having the most positive sexual identity attitudes. Study 2 was a qualitative study based on interviews with 10 of the participants in Study 1. Twenty-nine themes were identified and grouped under five domains (personal background, coming out, being Asian in the U.S., being gay in the U.S., and multiple identities). Most themes were related to the parallel and interactive processes between participants' racial and sexual identity development. Practical and research implications are discussed.     

'Hirelings in the Camp,the Court & the University': some figurations of US English departments,area studies and Masao Miyoshi as Blakean poet Written for the 'Imminent Questions' Conference at NYU, 29 April–1 May 2004

Abstract

This article concerns figuring forth and dismantling the poesis of area studies in the era of transnational capital and what Jack Spicer called 'the English Department of the Spirit'. I will build out from some poems, anecdotes and historical memories as well as play upon Kenzaburo Oe's figurations of Blake as visionary poet of geopolitical transformation and a revolutionary will to liberationist energies to connect the work Masao Miyoshi has done and prodded into trans/disciplinary and transnational coalition since the 1970s. I will figure forth Masao Miyoshi as a Blakean poet working to energize the refiguration and dismantling of the whole US field-imaginary of Japanese and Asian, as well as British and American area studies, which was our shared starting point in the dialectics of post-1968 history as teacher/student on the left-coast trans-Pacific US front.     

Racial and Ethnic Differences in Family Caregiving in California

Abstract

Family caregivers are the main source of long-term care for older persons in the United States. At the same time, cultural values and beliefs shape decisions surrounding who provides care and whether families use formal support interventions to assist the caregiver. The current article examines how the family caregiving experience differs among racial and ethnic groups in terms of caregiver characteristics, service utilization, caregiver strain, and coping mechanisms. Telephone interviews were conducted in English and Spanish with a random sample of 1,643 respondents in California who provide care to someone age 50 or over. Bivariate analyses showed evidence of ethnic differences in the demographic characteristics of caregivers, intensity of care provided, caregiver health, level of financial strain, religious service attendance, formal service utilization and barriers to formal services. Odds ratios showed that White and African American caregivers were about two times as likely to use formal caregiver services as were Asian/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and Latina American caregivers. Implied by these findings is the need for further understanding of caregiver service needs among diverse racial and ethnic groups.     

Trends in Asian American racial/ethnic intermarriage: a comparison of 1980 and 1990 census data

"In this paper, we use data from the 1990 [U.S.] census to compare patterns of Asian American intermarriage with those reported by Lee and Yamanaka (1990).... Our main findings show that: (i) the overall outmarriage rate has declined; (ii) Asian American inter-ethnic marriages (that is, marriages between two Asian Americans of different Asian ethnicities) have increased; and (iii) social distance, measured by an Index of Intermarriage Distance, between Asian Americans and other racial and ethnic groups has widened. We conclude by discussing some implications of the findings for the role of racial and ethnic intermarriage as an indicator of intergroup relations."     

Doubly troubling narratives Writing 'the oppression of possibility' in Puerto Rico and Cuba

Abstract

Since the 'boom' of US ethnic writing, a number of writers have published novels dealing with the colonial-era Hispanic Caribbean. US-authored novels such as The Agüero Sisters (Cristina García, 1998) have received little critical attention in the USA. Similarly, English language novels written by Hispanic Caribbean authors such as The House on the Lagoon (Rosario Ferré, 1996) have received even less, if not hostile, critical attention from Caribbean scholars. Both novels locate the origins of Caribbean modernity in the violent movement from Iberian colonialism to US neo-colonialism. By comparing these novels' narrative concerns about writing, history and race, the complex relationship between 'possibility' and 'violence' they depict is delineated. Such texts reflect a growing corpus of historical fiction about the Hispanic Caribbean and complicate the flawed and persistent schism between US Latina and Latin American literary traditions.     

A Second Look: Is There a Latina/o Gender Gap?

SUMMARY

This research builds upon and updates Montoya's 1996 study of the Latina/o gender gap through the use of the 1999 Harvard Kennedy School/Kaiser Family Foundation/Washington Post Latino Survey. Not only do we find a gender gap across six questions related to the use of force, social compassion, and women's social roles, we also find that the size and significance of the gap varies across Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban origin respondents. Our findings challenge past research that found limited evidence of a gender gap in public opinion among Latinos and Latinas nationally, and suggest that more research is needed in order to understand how gendered experiences help to frame public opinion within different racial/ethnic groups in the United States.     

'America' in transit The heresies of American studies abroad

Abstract

In arguing for the need to move beyond the export model and the global/local dialectic to internationalize American studies, this article explores the resiliency of the nation and nationalism to shape the transcontinental dynamics of the production, circulation, and consumption of 'America' as a commodity in a global market. In discussing the institutionalization of American studies in India, I argue that outside the boundaries of US American studies, we need to engage with the heretical practices of the globalization of American studies, which embody the translational yet conflictual itineraries of diverse interpretive communities across the world. Theorizing the relations among modernity, colonialism, and 'America', and re-imagining the emergence and significance of the many meanings and traditions of 'America' and American studies in transit along a global circuit are the central concerns of this article.     

Romancing the nation: Family melodrama and the sentimental logics of bourgeois nationalism

Abstract

In the years since the 1970s, something of a revolution has occurred in the area of South Asian American fiction, as writers like Bharati Mukherjee, Meena Alexander, Ginu Kamani, Anita Rau Badami and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni have begun publishing their work. Bharati Mukherjee's predominant focus is the politics of immigration, not only as a prevalent preoccupation in her fictional writing, but as the focus of a series of newspaper and journal articles as well. This article seeks to contextualize the development of Mukherjee's writing in relation to wider current debates about the nature of the American canon, the question of 'Americanness', and the continually vexed issue of multicultural politics in the US. In reading four of Mukherjee's novels both through and against her polemical writing, I will argue that Mukherjee's fictions should be read together as an ongoing counter-nativist project and, as such, constitute an important intervention in US race relations.     

Sui Sin Far's American Words

Abstract

This essay offers readings of three stories from Sui Sin Far's 1912 collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance: the title story, 'The Americanizing of Pau Tsu', and '"Its Wavering Image."' Each of these stories treats an episode of romance in a multiracial society as, simultaneously, a problem of reading and of writing in a contested culture. Each turns on a quoted passage from a poem, by Tennyson, Ban Jieyu, and Longfellow, respectively. (For the latter two stories, the sources have not previously been identified in published criticism.) Analysis of Sui Sin Far's subtle and transformative engagements with literary works from several national traditions both reveals new complexities in her fiction and has the potential to revise current views of literary history.     

The Price of 'Free' Trade: NAFTA and the Economies of Border Crossing in George Rabasa's The Floating Kingdom and Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead

Abstract

Under contemporary US immigration policy, the US-Mexico border has become a new 'American Frontier', a 'Tortilla Curtain' that marks the edges of nation and of national knowledge. As a result of such US policies and the increased cultural and political tensions in the area that result from them, the border region has more clearly emerged imaginatively and culturally as, in Gloria Anzaldúa's terms, a 'third country'. This paper analyses that 'third country' and its relationship to an arbitrarily imposed and emphatically enforced political and cultural border in the work of the Chicano writer George Rabasa and the Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko. Both Rabasa and Silko actively map a wide variety of ethnicities and cultures into the physical border region itself, engaging with the complex relationships between culture and nature, community and place. Both also emphasise an increasingly transgressive and transnational perspective. In this context, both writers highlight and expose the indeterminacy, fragility and permeability of borders of all kinds.