Description
Book SynopsisPerhaps the most popular of all canonical
American authors, Mark Twain is famous for creating works that satirize
American formations of race and empire. While many scholars have explored
Twain's work in African Americanist contexts, his writing on Asia and Asian
Americans remains largely in the shadows. In Sitting in Darkness, Hsuan Hsu
examines Twain's career-long archive of writings about United States relations
with China and the Philippines. Comparing Twain's early writings about Chinese
immigrants in California and Nevada with his later fictions of slavery and
anti-imperialist essays, he demonstrates that Twain's ideas about race were not
limited to white and black, but profoundly comparative as he carefully crafted
assessments of racialization that drew connections between groups, including
African Americans, Chinese immigrants, and a range of colonial populations.
Drawing on recent legal scholarshi
Trade Review
A brilliant book that will add immeasurably to Mark Twain studies, American literary studies, and the field of comparative studies of race and ethnicity. Exciting, well-written, and filled with surprising, unexpected connections,Sitting in Darknesscontributes to our understanding of the history of comparative racialization in America while deftly placing literature in legal and social contexts that are truly illuminating. -- Shelley Fisher Fishkin,Professor of English and Director of American Studies, Stanford University
Table of Contents
Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: "Coolies" and Comparative Racialization 1 in the Global West 1. "A Witness More Powerful than Himself ": Race, Testimony, 27 and Twain's Courtroom Farces 2. Vagrancy and Comparative Racialization in Huckleberry 53 Finn and "Three Vagabonds of Trinidad" 3. "Coolies" and Corporate Personhood in Those 83 Extraordinary Twins 4. A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of Wu Chih Tien: 109 Imperial Romance and Chinese Modernization 5. Body Counts and Comparative Anti-imperialism 139 Conclusion: Post-racial Twain? 167 Notes 171 Works Cited 209 Index 229 About the Author 244
