Mixed Race Studies

Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story

NewSouth Books (American Edition coming soon from Rutgers University Press)
July 2012
352 pages
234 x 153mm
Paperback ISBN: 9781742233314

Walter Hamilton, Journalist and Author

This is a beautifully written, deeply moving and well-researched account of the lives of mixed-race children of occupied Japan. The author artfully blends oral histories with an historical and political analysis of international race relations and immigration policy in North America and Australia, to highlight the little-known story of the thousands of children that resulted from the unions of Japanese women and Allied servicemen posted to Japan following WWII. It is a powerful narrative of loss, longing and reconnection, written by the ABC’s long-time Tokyo correspondent, Walter Hamilton.

Visit the website here.

The Biopolitics of Mixing: Thai Multiracialities and Haunted Ascendancies

Ashgate Publishing
October 2012
198 pages
234 x 156 mm
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-7546-7680-5
ebook ISBN 978-1-4094-2502-1

Jinthana Haritaworn, Assistant Professor in Gender, Race and Environment at the Faculty of Environmental Studies
York University, Canada

Debates over who belongs in Europe and who doesn’t increasingly speak the language of mixing, but how are the figures commonly described as ‘mixed’ actually embodied? The Biopolitics of Mixing invites us to reckon with the spectres of pathologization past and present, placing the celebration of mixing beside moral panics over terrorism and trafficking and a post-race multiculturalism that elevates some as privileged members of the neoliberal community, whilst ghosting others from it. Drawing on a broad archive including rich qualitative interviews conducted in Britain and Germany, media and policy debates, popular culture, race-based research and queer-of-colour theories, this book imagines into being communities in which people and places normally kept separate can coexist in the same reality.

As such, it will appeal to scholars across a range of sociological and cultural studies, including critical race, ethnic and migration studies, transnational gender and queer studies, German and European studies, Thai and Southeast Asian studies, and studies of affect, performativity, biopolitics and necropolitics. It should be read by all those interested in thinking critically on the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality and disability.

Contents

• Introduction: haunted origins
• Where are you from?
• From monster to fashion model: regenerating racialized bodies
• Is it better to be mixed race?
• Hybrid nations, mixed feelings: from marginal man to Obama
• Exceptional cities, exceptional citizens: metronormativity and mimeticism
• Reckoning with prostitutes: performing Thai femininity
• Conclusion: where do we want to go?
• Bibliography
• Index

Portuguese and Luso-Asian Legacies in Southeast Asia, 1511-2011, Volume 1: The Making of the Luso-Asian World: Intricacies of Engagement

Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
2011
323 pages
Soft cover ISBN: 978-981-4345-25-5
See Volume 1 here.

Edited by:

Laura Jarnagin, Visiting Professorial Fellow
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore
also Associate Professor Emerita in the Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies at Colorado School of Mines (Golden, Colorado)

“In 1511, a Portuguese expedition under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque arrived on the shores of Malacca, taking control of the prosperous Malayan port-city after a swift military campaign. Portugal, a peripheral but then technologically advanced country in southwestern Europe since the latter fifteenth century, had been in the process of establishing solid outposts all along Asia’s litoral in order to participate in the most active and profitable maritime trading routes of the day. As it turned out, the Portuguese presence and influence in the Malayan Peninsula and elsewhere in continental and insular Asia expanded far beyond the sphere of commerce and extended over time well into the twenty-first century.

Five hundred years later, a conference held in Singapore brought together a large group of scholars from widely different national, academic and disciplinary contexts, to analyse and discuss the intricate consequences of Portuguese interactions in Asia over the longue dure. The result of these discussions is a stimulating set of case studies that, as a rule, combine original archival and/or field research with innovative historiographical perspectives. Luso-Asian communities, real and imagined, and Luso-Asian heritage, material and symbolic, are studied with depth and insight. The range of thematic, chronological and geographic areas covered in these proceedings is truly remarkable, showing not only the extraordinary relevance of revisiting Luso-Asian interactions in the longer term, but also the surprising dynamism within an area of studies which seemed on the verge of exhaustion. After all, archives from all over the world, from Rio de Janeiro to London, from Lisbon to Rome, and from Goa to Macao, might still hold some secrets on the subject of Luso-Asian relations, when duly explored by resourceful scholars.”

—Rui M. Loureiro
Centro de Historia de Alem-Mar, Lisbon

“This two-volume set pulls together several interdisciplinary studies historicizing Portuguese ‘legacies’ across Asia over a period of approximately five centuries (ca. 1511-2011). It is especially recommended to readers interested in the broader aspects of the early European presence in Asia, and specifically on questions of politics, colonial administration, commerce, societal interaction, integration, identity, hybridity, religion and language.”

—Associate Professor Peter Borschberg
Department of History, National University of Singapore

Table of Contents

• Preliminary pages
• PART I: ADAPTATIONS AND TRANSITIONS IN THE SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIAN THEATRES, SIXTEENTH THROUGH EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
  • 1. Supplying Simples for the Royal Hospital: An Indo-Portuguese Medicinal Garden in Goa (1520-1830), by Timothy D. Walker 
  • 2. Malacca in the Era of Viceroy Linhares (1629-35), by Anthony Disney
  • 3. From Meliapor to Mylapore, 1662-1749: The Portuguese Presence in Sao Tome between the Qut.b Shahi Conquest and Its Incorporation into British Madras, by Paolo Aranha
  • 4. Eighteenth-Century Diplomatic Relations between Portuguese Macao and Ayutthaya: The 1721 Debt Repayment Embassy from Macao, by Stefan Halikowski Smith
  • 5. Continuities in Bengal’s Contact with the Portuguese and Its Legacy: A Community’s Future Entangled with the Past, by Ujjayan Bhattacharya
• PART II: DISPERSION, MOBILITY AND DEMOGRAPHY FROM THE SIXTEENTH INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES
  • 6. The Luso-Asians and Other Eurasians: Their Domestic and Diasporic Identities, by John Byrne
  • 7. The Population of the Portuguese Estado da India, 1750-1820: Sources and Demographic Trends, by Paulo Teodoro de Matos
  • 8. Flying with the Papagaio Verde (Green Parrot): An Indo-Portuguese Folkloric Motif in South and Southeast Asia, by K. David Jackson
• PART III: MIXED LEGACIES: THE PORTUGUESE AND LUSO-ASIANS IN THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES
  • 9. Portuguese Communities in East and Southeast Asia during the Japanese Occupation, by Felicia Yap
  • 10. Indo-Portuguese Literature and the Goa of Its Writers, by Everton V. Machado
  • 11. Binding Ties of Miscegenation and Identity: The Narratives of Henrique Senna Fernandes (Macao) and Rex Shelley (Singapore), by Isabel Maria da Costa Morais
  • 12. Portuguese Past, Still Imperfect: Revisiting Asia in Luso-Diasporic Writing, by Christopher Larkosh
• Bibliography
• Index

See Volume 1 here.

The Hafu Project: October Newsletter

The Hafu Project Newsletter
The Hafu Project
October 2012

The Hafu Project talking at a multicultural family workshop organized by TIPP in Meguro

We hope this email finds you well. This year the summer was harsh in Japan. We do hope you got to enjoy summer wherever you are in the world!

This volume of the newsletter features an interview with hafu writer, Sandra Häfelin, who recently published a book titled “Hafu ga bijin nante mousou desukara!!” (Translation: “It’s only a myth that hafus are beautiful!!”). Sandra was one of the many supporters who kindly participated in The Hafu Project in 2009 in Tokyo. Her website “Hafu wo kangaeyou” explores the topic of hafus through everyday experiences and stories. It is such a joy to read with plenty of real episodes, we highly reccommend her website!

If you happen to live in Japan, you may have noticed a surge of media exposure of hafus. To start with, Nippon Television interviewed a dozen young hafu girls in Harajuku to discuss some of the unexpected cons of being a hafu in Japan (Zoom In Saturday, aired on Sep 15). Weekly magazine SPA also had a dedicated feature on hafus, which included the ins and outs of why hafus are often considered to be a “gaikokujin” (foreigner). In addition, Nagoya Television covered three hafu individuals with varying stories (UP!, aired on Sep 27). Each of these three media exposures had different approaches but certainly added to the current dialogue of being a hafu in Japan…

Read the entire newsletter here.

Cedric Dover

Wasafiri
Volume 27, Issue 2 (2012)
pages 56-57
DOI: 10.1080/02690055.2012.662322

Cedric Dover was born in Calcutta in 1904. Dover’s mixed ancestry (English father, Indian mother) and his studies in zoology led to a strong interest in ethnic minorities and their marginalisation. After his studies, he joined the Zoological Survey of India as a temporary assistant entomologist. He also wrote several scientific articles and edited the Eurasian magazine New Outlook.

Dover settled in London In 1934 to continue his anthropological studies on issues of race. He published Half-Caste in 1937, followed by Hell in the Sunshine (1943). During the 1940s Dover contributed regularly to the BBC Indian Section of the Eastern Service alongside many other British-based South Asians. There he befriended George Orwell, in 1947 he published Feathers in the Arrow: An Approach for Coloured Writers and Readers. Dover moved to the United States in the same year and took up a range of visiting academic posts. He was a member of the faculty of Fisk University, as Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology. He also briefly lectured at the New School of Social Research, New York, and Howard University. Dover held a lifelong interest in African-American art, culture and literature and his influential book American Negro Art was published in 1960. Dover returned to London in the late 1950s. He continued to lecture and write on minority issues and culture until his death in 1961.

A Note on the Text

These poems were first published in Brown Phoenix (London; College Press. 1950).

Brown Phoenix

I am the brown phoenix
Fused in the flames
Of the centuries’ greed.

I am tomorrow’s man
Offering to share
Love, and the difficult quest,
In the emerging plan.

Do you see a dark man
Whose mind you shun,
Whose heart you never know,
Unable to understand
That I am the golden bird
With destiny clear?
Fools cannot destroy me
With arrogant fear.

Listen brown man, black man,
Yellow man, mongrel man,
And you white friend and comrade:
I am the brown phoenix—I am you.

‘There is my symbol for us all.’

For we are tomorrow’s men,
But not you,
Little pinkwhite man,
Not you!

Read or purchase the article here.

“Wait . . . they had a white baby?!?!”

Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu
2012-09-01

Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu
Stanford University

My niece recently had a baby, a beautiful boy. The proud grandmother showed the photo of the newborn to family members and everyone oohed and aahed. One of his cousins looked at the picture and said, “Oh he’s so cute!”  But suddenly a puzzled look came over him and he blurted out, “Wait . . . they had a white baby?!?!
 
When I heard this story I thought, Oh, it’s already started. People see colors and label according to what they see. The little cousin saw white and labeled the baby white. But mom is Japanese as well as Irish and Scottish. Dad is Irish as well as African American and American Indian. The baby is therefore all of these. But he is already being labeled by a single category, a race.
 
And he is already being looked at in relation to his family. The little cousin was intrigued  because to him mom is probably white and dad black, so put black and white together and what do you get? A white baby?…

Read the entire article here.

Tiger Mom’s Hapa Cubs

Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu
2012-05-09

Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu
Stanford University

Are persons with one Asian parent and one non-Asian parent Asian or not Asian? Schools don’t seem to know where to place them, leaving them on their own to determine their identities. In the article, “Some Asians’ college strategy: Don’t check ‘Asian’,” some young Hapa reveal the ambivalence and flexibility surrounding their identities. Parents wondering if they should regard their kids as Asian might take a lesson from Tiger Mom Amy Chua, who raised two Hapa children.

Amy describes her two girls, Sophia and Lulu, as having “brown hair, brown eyes, and Asianesque features.” They both speak Chinese and Sophia eats “all kind of organs and organisms, duck webs, pig ears, and sea slugs, critical aspects of Chinese identity.” Yet, on their first trip to China, the girls are treated as spectacles, drawing curious crowds, even in cosmopolitan Shanghai, when people stared, giggled, and pointed at the “two little foreigners who speak Chinese.” At the zoo, when the girls were taking pictures of the baby pandas, the crowd was taking pictures of the girls…

Read the entire article here.

Playing for Malaya: A Eurasian Family and the Pacific War

University of Hawai‘i Press (Distributed for the National University of Singapore Press)
2011
208 pages
Paper ISBN: 978-9971-69-573-6

Rebecca Kenneison

Reggie, according to his niece Wendy, ‘only told what Reggie wanted you to know.’ Reggie was my father. He had honed the technique of talking with apparent openness and using that talk as a decoy duck: while you were listening to it quack around the pond, you weren’t noticing all the others hiding in the reeds. What follows includes tales that Reggie told repeatedly but, on the whole, it’s about what Reggie didn’t tell me.

So begins a stunning personal account of a Eurasian family living in Malaya. Reggie was the author’s father, and one of the many gaps in his account of his family was that his mother was Eurasian. When Rebecca Kenneison discovered this omission after his death, she set out to learn more about her extended family on the other side of the world.

Set in the 1930s and 1940s, this book recounts the experiences of an extended Eurasian family during the invasion and occupation of Malaya by the Japanese. Colonial society considered Eurasians insufficiently European to be treated as British, but during the Pacific War they seemed all too European to the Japanese, who subjected the Eurasian community to discrimination and worse. Because many Eurasians, including members of the Kenneison family, supported the Allied cause, their wartime experiences are an extraordinary account of tragedy, heroism and endurance, presented here with great eloquence and clarity.

That’s How It Goes: Autobiography Of A Singapore Eurasian

Select Books
2008
235 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9789814022392

F. A. C. “Jock” Oehlers

These memoirs by a member of one of Singapore’s leading Eurasian families offers many sidelights onto Singapore’s life in the mid-20th century. The author, then a dental student, tells of the hardships of his life with a young family at the Japanese-enforced agricultural settlement for Eurasians at Bahau, Negri Sembilan. He tells of his career as an oral surgeon at the University and in private practice, his involvement with the development of the Singapore Kennel Club until his 1990 retirement to Perth, West Australia. With black-and-white photographs.

The Social World of Batavia: Europeans and Eurasians in Colonial Indonesia (Second Edition)

University of Wisconsin Press
April 2009 (First Published in 1983)
312 pages
6 x 9  
14 b/w illustrations

Jean Gelman Taylor, Associate Professor of History
University of New South Wales

In the seventeenth century, the Dutch established a trading base at the Indonesian site of Jacarta. What began as a minor colonial outpost under the name Batavia would become, over the next three centuries, the flourishing economic and political nucleus of the Dutch Asian Empire. In this pioneering study, Jean Gelman Taylor offers a comprehensive analysis of Batavia’s extraordinary social world—its marriage patterns, religious and social organizations, economic interests, and sexual roles. With an emphasis on the urban ruling elite, she argues that Europeans and Asians alike were profoundly altered by their merging, resulting in a distinctive hybrid, Indo-Dutch culture.

Original in its focus on gender and use of varied sources—travelers’ accounts, newspapers, legal codes, genealogical data, photograph albums, paintings, and ceramics—The Social World of Batavia, first published in 1983, forged new paths in the study of colonial society. In this second edition, Gelman offers a new preface as well as an additional chapter tracing the development of these themes by a new generation of scholars.