Narrating Race

The 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.

”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