Intimate Occupations: The Afterlife of the “Coolie”

Abstract

AbstractThe “coolie” occupied the European colonial imaginary as a racialized, laboring Asian body ripe for economic experimentation. But what of the interior life and the afterlife of this laborer? This article considers how two contemporary novels, Patricia Powell's The Pagoda and Monique Truong's The Book of Salt, occupy and queer the colonial archive by giving voice to “impossible subjects.” The Pagoda's protagonist Mr. Lowe escaped China as a young girl and is forced to work as a shopkeeper in post‐Emancipation Jamaica. The Book of Salt's protagonist Binh is a gay Vietnamese cook in Gertrude Stein's Paris home. Binh and Lowe represent the “coolie's” legacy and are thus rendered invisible despite the blood, sweat, and tears that go into their occupations. In these narratives, the protagonists form intimate sexual relationships with black characters who share a kindred sense of alienation becoming bodies that matter.