{"id":40210,"date":"2015-03-02T20:40:09","date_gmt":"2015-03-02T20:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=40210"},"modified":"2016-06-04T19:36:35","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T19:36:35","slug":"beyond-the-chinese-connection-contemporary-afro-asian-cultural-production-by-crystal-s-anderson-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=40210","title":{"rendered":"Beyond The Chinese Connection: Contemporary Afro-Asian Cultural Production by Crystal S. Anderson (review)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beyond The Chinese Connection: Contemporary Afro-Asian Cultural Production by Crystal S. Anderson (review)<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Journal of Asian American Studies<\/a>
\nVolume 18, Number 1, February 2015<\/a>
\npages 107-109
\nDOI: 10.1353\/jaas.2015.0003<\/a><\/p>\n

Edlie Wong<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of English
\nUniversity of Maryland<\/em><\/p>\n

Anderson, Crystal S.<\/a>, Beyond The Chinese Connection: Contemporary Afro-Asian Cultural Production<\/em><\/a> (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013).<\/p>\n

Afro-Asian comparative racialization studies have begun to change how we think about race and its multiple and contradictory meanings across different periods of U.S. history. Beyond The Chinese Connection: Contemporary Afro-Asian Cultural Production<\/em><\/a> contributes to this important trend in thinking about comparative constructions of race and cross-racial antagonisms and alliances. Earlier work on Afro-Asian comparative racialization such as Vijay Prashad\u2019s Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting<\/em> (2001) and Bill Mullen\u2019s Afro-Orientalism<\/em> (2004) tended to emphasize the revolutionary\u2014indeed, at times utopian\u2014forms of anticolonial transpacific polyculturalism and political collaborations. Anderson\u2019s volume explicitly builds upon and broadens this work. According to Anderson, Afro-Asian comparative racialization studies often favor anticapitalist critiques, taking the 1955 Bandung conference<\/a> as the storied origins of the global alignment of the political struggles of African and Asian peoples. In contrast, her book offers a self-described cultural approach that emphasizes historical and ethnic specificity, disarticulating the homogenizing panethnicities implied in the term \u201cAfro-Asian\u201d to consider \u201cthe way the histories of individual ethnic groups may impact their interaction with one another\u201d (37).<\/p>\n

There is perhaps no more fitting figure for this study than the martial arts film star Bruce Lee<\/a>, whose cross-racial and cross-ethnic appeal transformed him into an Afro-Asian cultural icon in the 1970s. Anderson\u2019s volume stages a series of encounters between Lee\u2019s signature films\u2014one for each of the four chapters\u2014and a range of post-1990s novels, films, and popular culture revealing the complexities of inter- and intraethnic Afro-Asian interactions. Anderson begins with the film Way of the Dragon<\/em> (1972) and charts Lee\u2019s emergence as a transnational and cross-cultural phenomenon. \u201cLee\u2019s legacy,\u201d she argues, \u201cfunctions as a framework to interrogate the contemporary landscape\u201d (5). In chapter 2, Lee\u2019s Enter the Dragon<\/em> (1973) facilitates an exploration of the limits and possibilities of interethnic male friendship in Frank Chin\u2019s novel Gunga Din Highway<\/em> (1994) and two mainstream Hollywood films, Rush Hour 2<\/em> (2001) and Unleashed<\/em> (2005). In chapter 3, Lee\u2019s The Chinese Connection<\/em> (1972) allows Anderson to examine the theme of ethnic imperialism in Ishmael Reed\u2019s satirical novel Japanese by Spring<\/em> (1993) and the Japanese anime series Samurai Champloo<\/em> (2004), while Lee\u2019s The Big Boss<\/em> (1971) frames the final chapter on intra- and interethnic conflict and solidarity in Paul Beatty\u2019s novel White Boy Shuffle<\/em> (1996) and the highly popular Matrix<\/em> science fiction film trilogy (1999 (2003). These cultural case studies allow Anderson ample opportunity to engage in broader historical contextualization and considerations of Afro-Asian social dynamics. In the case of Rush Hour 2<\/em> and Unleashed<\/em>, Anderson draws attention away from film reception to explore the historical underpinnings of their plots and characterizations, from Rush Hour 2\u2019s<\/em> eroticization of Chinese women and the 1875 Page Act<\/a> equating all Chinese women with prostitutes to the economic exploitation of the Chinese coolie reformulated in Unleashed\u2019s<\/em> plot of human trafficking.<\/p>\n

Anderson organizes these cultural readings according to how each work constructs Afro-Asian cross-cultural dynamics along a broad \u201ccontinuum of intercultural interactions\u201d (3). At one end of this spectrum lies what she identifies as \u201ccultural emulsion.\u201d A concept drawn from Homi K. Bhabha\u2019s theory of hybridity, cultural emulsion designates those instances where \u201ccultures come together but do not mix in response to pressures to reinforce ethnic or national boundaries\u201d (3). Against this more limited form of cultural distancing, Anderson counterpoises the concept of \u201ccultural translation,\u201d which \u201cuses one ethnic culture to interpret another ethnic culture\u201d and \u201crecognizes more complex combinations of cultures\u201d across national boundaries (35). This framework of emulsion and translation lends a somewhat static quality to Anderson\u2019s detailed readings, and the most compelling of the case studies predictably land on the cultural translation end of the spectrum. For example, Anderson explores how Samurai Champloo\u2019s<\/em> uses of African American hip-hop and graffiti aesthetics transform animated tales of eighteenth-century Japan into social commentaries aimed at urban Japanese youth culture. Her reading of White Boy Shuffle<\/em> emphasizes Beatty\u2019s experimentation with Japanese aesthetics and his encoding of African American political disillusionment in the subplot of ritual suicide and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beyond The Chinese Connection: Contemporary Afro-Asian Cultural Production by Crystal S. Anderson (review) Journal of Asian American Studies Volume 18, Number 1, February 2015 pages 107-109 DOI: 10.1353\/jaas.2015.0003 Edlie Wong, Associate Professor of English University of Maryland Anderson, Crystal S., Beyond The Chinese Connection: Contemporary Afro-Asian Cultural Production (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013). Afro-Asian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,16,5,1196,8,20],"tags":[19472,9600,9599,19473,2682],"class_list":["post-40210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-asia","category-book-reviews","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-bruce-lee","tag-crystal-anderson","tag-crystal-s-anderson","tag-edlie-wong","tag-journal-of-asian-american-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47296,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40210\/revisions\/47296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}