Asian American Literature in Transition, 1850–1930: Volume 1

The book provides new scholarship on Asian North American literature and culture from an often-neglected historical period.

This groundbreaking collection makes the case that Asian North American literary and cultural works produced between 1850 and 1930 are actually vitally important in illuminating the histories and experiences of Asians in the Americas. It will be a key resource for anyone interested in learning about the long durée of Asians in the US and Canada.The years between 1850 and 1930 witnessed the first large-scale migration of peoples from East Asia and South Asia to North America and the emergence of the US as an imperial power in the Pacific. This period also produced the first instances of Asian North American writing, theater, and film. This exciting collection examines how the many literary and cultural works from this period approached questions of migration, exclusion, and identity. Covering an extensive ranges of topics including anticolonialist writing, the erotics of queer modernist poetry, interracial desire, and the racial gaze in silent film, the book shows the diverse and multi-ethnic nature of literary and cultural production at a crucial period in modern formations of race as well as literary and cultural aesthetics.