Diasporic History Research Articles

An Afro-Chinese Caribbean: Cultural Cartographies of Contrariness in the Work of Antonio Chuffat Latour, Margaret Cezair-Thompson, and Patricia Powell

...when you visit Guyana or Trinidad, you see symbolically inscribed in the faces of their peoples, the paradoxical 'truth' of Christopher Columbus' mistake: you can find 'Asia' by sailing west, if you know where to look! -Stuart Hall1 Indeed, one could find Asia in the Caribbean. The globality of diasporic flows, peoples, ideas, and cultures has transformed how we think of national cartographies and area histories. In the case of Asian diasporas to the Americas, Asians founded a settlement in New Orleans in 1763. This first community was a fishing village created by Filipinos who escaped their Spanish colonizers. The following century brought and Indians in massive numbers to the Americas and to the Caribbean. Historically, the are especially known in migration studies as global diasporics who travelled to and remained in all parts of the world, with longstanding histories in South Africa, Australia, Canada, Peru, Hawaii, the Caribbean, and elsewhere- a mapping too expansive to be briefly summarized. migrations also have multiple tracings, with cultural hybridities crisscrossing the world, such as in the life-story of a Trinidadian who travelled to China to support Sun Yat-Sen. In 1944, Trinidadian-born Eugene Chen died while under house arrest in Shanghai, after devoting decades to anti-imperialist activities and revolutionary change in China. Chen was born Eugene Bernard Acham in Port-of-Spain in 1878. Yet he would leave Trinidadian life, travel to China, and assume an influential role in one of the twentieth century's most tumultuous and far-reaching revolutions. The story of an intellectual of transoceanic and hybrid lineages, underscores the globality of diasporic histories, wherein cultures and politics are hybrid, local, and global at the same time. Obvious questions arise regarding the notion of Chinese-ness in the story of questions that suggest a configuration of diaspora outside of traditional paradigms of Asian ethnic markers. Perhaps Chen could be representative of essential as he returned to China and devoted his life to its politics. On the other hand, the romantic (and problematic) notions of and origin could be countered by querying: how much of his life work was the result of his character and vision as formed in Trinidadian context? Biographical details reveal that Eugene Bernard Acham was of Afro-Chinese descent and that he married a creole Trinidadian with whom he had four children2 The cultural capital of ethnic inheritance, of Acham being renamed Chen, masks the equally vital cultural capital of being a Trinidadian whose habits, passions, and views, were shaped outside China. An examination of the in the Caribbean begs the question of who is and what is Chinese. The messiness of ethnic and national identifications, and their manifestations in creole cultures, requires an inclusive and broad sense of what being Chinese constitutes, along with a measured skepticism toward homogeneity and essentialized authenticity. A questioning of authenticity appears in several novels and histories of the Caribbean. Some offer suggestive portrayals of what I call contrarian diasporic identity. In three instances, two contemporary novels and a rare communal biography, portraits of identity are tied directly to the coolie, a subject of labour history that is still largely absent from aesthetics, creative works, and productions of national culture. The three works offer complex interpretations of diasporic identity, its relation to national culture and nineteenth century subjugation.3 Contrariness and Disloyalty: Margaret Cezair-Thompson and Patricia Powell Jamaican novelist Margaret Cezair-Thompson marks an instance of contrary Chinese-ness, when a character of her novel True History of Paradise is on his deathbed. It is upon death that we anticipate the comforting tropes of return and reconciliation, yet it is with death that Cezair-Thompson troubles these expectations and rites of cultural and national belonging. …

Introduction: Have Come, Are Here: Reading Filipino/a American Literature

In recent decades, Filipino/a writers have become increasingly conscious of gap between critical expectations and definitions inherited from culturally dominant societies and literature which strives to develop ethnic and cultural identities. A sense of discontinuous history and cultural hybridization produced by a palimpsestic journey of imperialism, cultural imposition, diasporic movement, and assimilation obliges writers to work within a heterogeneous overlapping of cultures with their attendant myths, religious and ethical philosophies, aesthetic ideologies, narrative forms, political systems, and economic modes. Importantly, creative production by Filipino/a Americans continues to grow, and grow in unexpected ways, making a renewed appreciation of this work imperative. In their increasingly multilayered approaches to writing, Filipino/a Americans demonstrate what N. V. M. Gonzalez notes as urgency for literature of self-appraisal (Gonzalez and Campomanes 72) that accommodates contention between simultaneously conflicting and supportive sensibilities (Sarreal 231-32). Indeed, much Filipino/a literature is characterized by a critical intelligence that questions unproblematic perspectives on ethnic and national affiliation, linguistic negotiation, and cultural production. This same critical intelligence also contests undiscriminating conceptions of Filipino/a writing as narratives of successful integration by presenting a model that negotiates alternative approaches to representation of located ethnic subjectivities. The colonial legacy provides critical link between writing in English in and Filipino/a literature, and positions Filipino/a writers into a wider global category. Indeed, as scholars have noted from beginning of critical inquiry into Filipino/a literature, this is fundamental difference between this writing and that of other Asian groups, both literatures being genetically linked to vagaries and accidents of colonialism, Spanish and American, and to needs of US colonial government to sustain and maintain itself in Philippines (Solberg 40). The Philippines' ambivalent relationship with United States necessarily nuances representation of and by Filipino/as and Filipino/a Americans in literature, as Luis Francia signals when he asserts that we are born and wherever we choose to live, America can never be a neutral subject for Filipinos (7). Indeed, upon reviewing Bino Realuyo's novel, The Umbrella Country, Vince Gotera argues that narrative depicts the story of dreams and nightmares in Philippines, where solution to every problem is America: if we could only get to US, if we could only be American (69). This is precisely conundrum faced by many, if not most, Filipino/a writers: nature of Filipino/a American-ness and many possible ways to inhabit and creatively negotiate that identity. Further, because of Philippines' postcolonial situation and diasporic history, this renewed identity resonates in Elleke Boehmer's definition of new breed of postcolonial writers currently revitalizing literary scene, result of processes of decolonization, a merging of genetic and cultural influences that produces a literature of deep historical, political, and social significance and mythic proportion. She describes 1990s generic postcolonial writer as more likely to be a cultural traveller, or an extraterritorial, than a national. Ex-colonial by birth, 'Third World' in cultural interest, cosmopolitan in almost every other way, he or she works within precincts of Western metropolis while at same time retaining thematic and/or political connections with a national background (Boehmer 233). This position admits--indeed, compels--multiple and simultaneous national, cultural, and linguistic affiliations by renouncing limited and limiting formulations of identity. …

Migratory Sexualities, Diasporic Histories, and Memory in Queer Cuban-American Cultural Production

Interrogations of diasporic relations between place, subjectivity, and sexuality have transformed representational practices and paradigms of both Cuban and Cuban-American identity on multiple fronts. Through a consideration of two texts representing the Cuban diaspora-Achy Obejas's 1996 novel Memory Mambo and Carmelita Tropicana's performance piece “Milk of amnesia/Leche de amnesia”, first developed in 1994–I explore the centrality of sexuality in constructions of self, community, and nation. These works effectively ‘queer’ notions of immigrant belonging and Cuban diasporic consciousness, particularly in the sense of exploring the spatial imaginary of diaspora to expose and question the heteropatriarchal, and hence nationalist, underpinnings of more dominant models of diaspora. In their work, Obejas and Tropicana indicate the spatial dimensions of cultural memory and the imbrication of diasporic politics and sexualities. Attending to differences in genre, each work mines a crucial interplay between diasporic and sexual histories. In Tropicana's performance piece she uses a parodic sensibility and the broad humor enabled by the stage to engage, in a new register, with the politics of memory and the uses of place and sexuality, both in relation to Cuba and to the United States. Obejas works through and against the conventions of the contemporary novel (both immigrant and lesbian coming-of-age stories, in particular) to undo many of the assumptions regarding memory, sexuality, and cultural nostalgia as they are represented in her narrative. Both Obejas and Tropicana assert an imbrication of histories of colonialism, migration, and national attachment with experiences and practices of sexuality and gender in ways that underscore the importance of space and place in the constitution of collective memories.

Performing the Nation in Chicago

Performing the Nation in Chicago Bonnie Urciuoli Hamilton College Ana Yolanda Ramos-Zayas. 2003. National Performance: The Politics of Class, Race and Space in Puerto Rican Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. In National Performance: The Politics of Class, Race and Space in Puerto Rican Chicago, Ana Yolanda Ramos-Zayas confronts a central problem of cultural representation; that is, who is being represented? This study of Puerto Rican nationalism in Chicago, based on fieldwork carried out in the mid to late 1990s, focuses on the ways in which elements of Puerto Rican identity are selected, foregrounded and performed. Such performance of national identity makes available for analysis the complex, sometimes oppositional elements of class position, racialization and geopolitical location that constitutes the range of people who identify as Puerto Rican. The central question in this study is the nature of representation of that national imaginary. The history of Puerto Rico shows how complicated that question can be. Let us start with some relevant background about Puerto Rico. Originally a colony of Spain, Puerto Rico had achieved a significant measure of autonomy just as the Spanish-American war began in 1898. When that war ended a few months later, Puerto Rico had become a U.S. overseas territory along with the Philippines and Guam. The U.S. thus gained its first geopolitical stakes in the Caribbean and Latin America, and in the Pacific. From the U.S. point of view, Puerto Rico was a territory. From the point of view of those who defined themselves as Puerto Rican, particularly those who had been instrumental in establishing the terms of autonomy from Spain in1897, Puerto Rico was a nation. The sense of Puerto Rico as a nation has persisted ever since, in various ways for different parts of the population, depending on the class, race and geopolitical distinctions that have emerged over the hundred-plus years of U.S. political, economic and racial hegemony. There are those, and have been throughout that century, for whom Puerto Rico should by rights be politically independent. There are others whose political convictions are less radical but who have a profound and lasting sense of cultural uniqueness, and for whom Puerto Rico is an absolutely distinct entity. As a political entity-first territory, then commonwealth-Puerto Rico is enclosed by its island boundaries in the Caribbean with no effective representation in U.S. national process. Participation in specifically Puerto Rican political process has meant participation in a very contained process. At the same time, Puerto Ricans have a long diasporic history. At present, the population of Puerto Rico is about 3.8 million and the number of Puerto Ricans living in the mainland U.S. is about 2.9 million, meaning that of the 6.7 million people who define themselves as Puerto Rican, over 40% live in the U.S. outside Puerto Rico, afuera as people say. (This is a fluid population-many currently living afuera have lived or will live in Puerto Rico, and vice versa.) Those living afuera are in a position to take part in political process as U.S. citizens (which Puerto Ricans have been since 1917) but nothing structural distinguishes that participation as Puerto Rican. Nevertheless, the sense of Puerto Rico as a nation-in Ramos-Zayas' terms, a diasporic nationalism-has been deeply pervasive. At various points over the past century, the U.S. has attempted, with little investment in the interests of actual Puerto Ricans (as opposed to, e.g., tax breaks for U.S. corporations operating in Puerto Rico), to turn the educational and economic institutions of Puerto Rico itself into little models of U.S. policy-craft. The most pervasive outcome of U.S.- sponsored economic policy has been the use of Puerto Ricans as a reserve labor force, either within Puerto Rico or by recruiting Puerto Rican labor to various secondary sector locales, particularly since World War II. …

'Start Narrative Here': Excess and the Space of History in Asian Diasporic Films

This article considers the fraught relationship between memory, culture and politics in an analysis of Asian diasporic film. The privileging categories of race and nation as the key determinants of Asian diasporic identity are resisted. Instead, through analyses of specific filmic segments from such feature films as Wayne Wang's 'Chan is Missing' (1982), Srinivas Krishnan's Masala (1991) and Gragg Araki's Totally Fucked Up (1994); and such shorter films by diasporic women as Lise Yasui's Family Gathering (1988), Pam Tom's Two Lies (1989), Hellen Lee's Sally's Beauty Spot (1990), Janice Tanaka's Memories from the Department of Amnesia (1991), it is argued that the narrative of space, and specifically the space of racist, gender and homophobic violence, opens up the possibility of multiple forms of political excess. It enables, for instance, the contestation of dominant cinematic processes of suture through an elaboration of diasporic, feminist and queer space, and the displacement of Asian American identity beyond the master signifiers of race and nation through a consideration of diasporic history and the history of gender and sexuality. Yet, through this process of contesting, the very category of Asian diasporic film is brought to crisis. It is in the negotiation of these complex histories and the development of other languages that the effectiveness of Asian American film as counter-memory is situated.

Comparativism, Ethnicity and the United States: A Diasporic History of the Americas

WHILE MANY PRACTITIONERS OF AMERICAN STUDIES EXPRESS THE importance of rethinking nation-state and its basic social constructions by recasting our object of study as the Americas, there remains a series of divides between U.S.-based and Latin American and Caribbean projects, ethnic studies and works on imperialism, and scholarship on race and other social formations. This impasse emerges from curious simultaneity of theoretical excesses of transnationalism and a scholarly timidity around different standards for research. How exciting, then, to read Rachel Buff's new book, Immigration and Political Economy of Home, which offers a fruitful, if unexpected, juxtaposition of West Indian Brooklyn and American Indian Minneapolis to create a point of entry into very question of how we might devise new projects on the Americas that are intrinsically transnational and transcultural. In exploring construction of social formations in two different U.S. urban spaces, Buff establishes a refreshingly expansive geography for production of migrant identity. In some ways an account of multiple yet symbolically connected pan-ethnicities, this book specifically illuminates significance of borders in everyday cultural

Does Australian history have a future?

This article first considers the problems of isolation that can beset national histories like Australian history, and then discusses the moves in recent years towards more transnational forms of history. In particular, developments in comparative histories, transnational histories, diasporic histories, and world histories raise questions about the contribution of Australian historians to future historical scholarship.

Indigenous Articulations

Taking its inspiration from the thought and action of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, this essay proposes a comparative analysis of "articulated sites of indigeneity." It explores the advantages and limitations of translating North Atlantic cultural studies approaches into island Pacific contexts. Stuart Hall's articulation theory is proposed as a partial way beyond the stand-offs created by recent debates around the "invention of tradition." The dialectic of indigenous and diasporic histories, roots and routes, is explored with regard to experiences of post-and neocolonial interdependence and pragmatic sovereignty.

Chinese Coolies and African Slaves in Cuba, 1847-74

In 1874, a New York Herald correspondent in Cuba, James O'Kelly, observed that a Chinese coolie "contrary to the representations made about the traffic in Asiatics was treated in every respect the same way as his sable companions in misfortune." 2 O'Kelly was one of many observers of that period who recorded similar assessments; later, Cuban historians came to the same conclusion. While American scholars debate whether the Chinese coolies of Cuba should be called "slaves," the authoritative scholars of Chinese labor in Cuba, Juan Jiménez Pastrana and Juan Pérez de la Riva, substantiated the horrific conditions of Chinese coolies in Cuba and unreservedly stated that coolies were slaves in all but name. What were the conditions of Chinese coolie labor in Cuba and how is this related to our present understanding of labor's legacy in Asian American studies? Such questions become critical as we assess our present narratives of human experience, with the "coolie" having become a major figure in the study of Asian migration to the Americas. The coolie has figured into our diasporic history, literary narratives, ethnographic studies, and perhaps [End Page 99] most importantly, in communal memories and constructions of ancestral heritage.

The “aesthetics of Personalism” in Caryl Phillips's writing: Complexity as a new brand of humanism

This paper attempts to underline the epistemological implications of Phillips's handling of diasporic history through a focus on individual lives in Cambridge (1991) and The Nature of Blood (1997). His confessional first‐person narratives highlight the intricacies inherent in human nature, thereby resisting the globalizing discourse of liberal humanism. Even more importantly, his fictions seem to illustrate a new, more understanding approach to this often hackneyed term, for they give voice to individuals whose multiple differences are, paradoxically, part proof of a common humanity, viewed here as an inclusive rather than exclusive concept.

Jews, slaves, and the slave trade: setting the record straight

In the wake of the civil rights movement, a great divide has opened up between African American and Jewish communities. What was historically a harmonious and supportive relationship has suffered from a powerful and oft-repeated legend, that Jews controlled and masterminded the slave trade and owned slaves on a large scale, well in excess of their own proportion in the population. In this groundbreaking book, likely to stand as the definitive word on the subject, Eli Faber cuts through this cloud of mystification to recapture an important chapter in both Jewish and African diasporic history. Focusing on the British empire, Faber assesses the extent to which Jews participated in the institution of slavery through investment in slave trading companies, ownership of slave ships, commercial activity as merchants who sold slaves upon their arrival from Africa, and direct ownership of slaves. His unprecedented original research utilizing shipping and tax records, stock-transfer ledgers, censuses, slave registers, and synagogue records reveals, once and for all, the minimal nature of Jews' involvement in the subjugation of Africans in the Americas. A crucial corrective, Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade lays to rest one of the most contested historical controversies of our time.