Description
Book SynopsisThe essays in this volume deal with the complexities of race in the Asia-Pacific context. Social tensions concerning race and ethnicity continue to pose profound challenges to Asia-Pacific countries in various stages of development and modernisation. Issues such as social justice, identity-formation, marginalisation and alienation, gender and related issues, are inevitably implicated in the racial cultures of Asia, and where Asian diasporic communities develop. The essays in this volume explore the ways in which race-culture is reflected in literature and cultural texts (drama and performance, visual arts, film and television). Included in this volume are essays on Amitav Ghosh, Vivan Sundaram, Li-Young Lee, R. K. Narayan, Ayu Utami, Dewi Lestari, Rex Shelley, Xu Xi, Pico Iyer and others.
Trade Review”Read together, the essays make a convincing case for critical race studies as a powerful lens through which to comprehend postcolonial legacies in contemporary Asian cultural production while demonstrating how culture in turn reconfigures the very grounds in which race is rendered meaningful.” - Christopher Lee, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in: Pacific Affairs, Vol. 86.1 (2013), pp. 124-126
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Robbie B.H. Goh: Introduction: Writing Race and Asia-Pacific Mobilities – Constructions and Contestations Tania Roy: Vivan Sundaram’s “Amrita”: Towards a Style of the Body Robbie B.H. Goh: The Return of the Scientist: Essential Knowledge and Global Tribalism in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and The Calcutta Chromosome Walter S.H. Lim: Ethnicity and the Southeast Asian Diaspora in Li-Young Lee’s The Winged Seed Chitra Sankaran: Narrating Race, Gender and Sexuality in R.K. Narayan’s The Painter of Signs Harry Aveling: Chinese Ethnicity in Post-Reformation Indonesian Women’s Fiction: A Comparative Study of Two Novels by Ayu Utami and Dewi Lestari Caroline S. Hau: Resi(g)nifying the Chinese and Filipino in Cinematic Narratives Lily Rose Tope: Performing Ethnicity, Ethnicizing History: The Eurasians of Singapore in Rex Shelley’s The Shrimp People Kwok-Kan Tam: Performing the Self: Race and Identity in Two Hong Kong English-Language Plays Terry Siu-Han Yip: Border Crossing: Place, Identity and Dis/Location of the Self in Xu Xi’s The Unwalled City Julie Mehta: Hybrid Brown Gaijin Is a “Distinguished Alien” in Sakoku Japan Judy Celine Ick: Ugly Americans and Little Brown Brothers: Spectacles of Identity in Contemporary Philippine Drama Wenche Ommundsen: Disappearing Race: Normative Whiteness and Cultural Appropriation in Australian Refugee Narratives Agnes S.L. Lam: Race in Asian Poetry in English: Ethnic, National and Cosmopolitan Representations Notes on Contributors Index
