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book: The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery
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The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery

The Chinese Worker and the Minstrel Form
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2020

About this book

The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery explores how antiblack racism lived on through the figure of the Chinese worker in US literature after emancipation. Drawing out the connections between this liminal figure and the formal aesthetics of blackface minstrelsy in literature of the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction eras, Caroline H. Yang reveals the ways antiblackness structured US cultural production during a crucial moment of reconstructing and re-narrating US empire after the Civil War.

Examining texts by major American writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Sui Sin Far, and Charles Chesnutt—Yang traces the intertwined histories of blackface minstrelsy and Chinese labor. Her bold rereading of these authors' contradictory positions on race and labor sees the figure of the Chinese worker as both hiding and making visible the legacy of slavery and antiblackness. Ultimately, The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery shows how the Chinese worker manifests the inextricable links between US literature, slavery, and empire, as well as the indispensable role of antiblackness as a cultural form in the United States.

Author / Editor information

Caroline H. Yang is Assistant Professor of English at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Reviews

"Situating the 'Chinese question' in relation to Reconstruction, The Peculiar Afterlife assiduously documents continuities between the white supremacy of the antebellum South and the racial logics of the frontier... Yang's excavation of the Chinese worker's representational ties to blackface minstrelsy provides a timely illustration of the pervasive and constitutive role of antiblackness in US racial discourses."—Amy C. Tang, The American Literary History Online Review --- "Yang provides new insights into the role of blackface minstrelsy in the post–Civil War period, particularly in California....Readers should bear in mind that the author's aim is not to explore the personal racism of any given author. Rather, it is to elucidate an evolving system of racial representation deployed across literature and popular culture that underpinned white supremacy, US imperialism, and settler colonialism. Recommended."—J. R. Wendland, CHOICE --- "The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery offers fascinating new insights into minstrelsy as an enduring cultural form. Caroline Yang's nuanced comparative analyses enrich by challenging us to reconceptualize minstrelsy in the development of US literature and our ideas of the 'West.'"—Edlie L. Wong, University of Maryland, College Park --- "Elegantly parsing both continuities and discontinuities in racial formation from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, Caroline Yang charts the peculiar survivals of the minstrel form. The power of antiblackness to deform Blackness and Chineseness on both stage and page is everywhere evident in this assiduously researched and argued book."—Tavia Nyong'o, Yale University

Topics

  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    vii
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    Acknowledgments

    ix
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    Introduction: The Chinese Question in the Early Afterlife of Slavery

    1
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  • Part One. “Earliest Pioneers” of White Literature of the West During Reconstruction
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    1. The “Heathen Chinee” and Topsy in Bret Harte’s Narratives of the West

    25
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    2. Mark Twain’s Chinese Characters and the Fungibility of Blackness

    65
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    3. Ambrose Bierce’s Critique of Blackface Minstrelsy and Anti-Chinese Racism

    109
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  • Part Two. “Pioneers” of Asian American and African American Literatures at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
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    4. Representations of Gender and Slavery in Sui Sin Far’s Early Fictions

    147
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    5. Reading the Minstrel Tradition and U.S. Empire Through Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition

    186
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    Notes

    227
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    Bibliography

    245
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    Index

    271
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
September 7, 2020
eBook ISBN:
9781503612068
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
296
View content
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503612068
eBook ISBN: 9781503612068
Keywords for this book
Blackface Minstrelsy; Chinese Labor; Reconstruction; Chinese Exclusion; Slavery; Antiblackness; American Literature; Nineteenth-Century American Literature; Comparative Racialization; Empire
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
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