Antiracist Medievalisms: Lessons from Chinese Exclusion

February 16, 2018 2:03 PM

"In the following sketches, I explore how early Chinese Americans created space for antiracist medievalism. Not only did people of Chinese ancestry turn “medieval” tropes and rhetoric against their contemporary detractors, but they also found affirming possibilities to assert a shared humanity and to claim cultural belonging."

Bonus points for noting that Bret Harte's poem "The Heathen Chinee" was meant to satirize racisim and, uh, failed spectacularly at that.

posted by Hypatia (5 comments total)

The text accompanying the first political cartoon linked to describes it as condemning the treatment of Chinese-descended people in California, and would appear to be making the point that the attack on the man depicted is the opposite of chivalry. (Though the second cartoon is more consonant with the essayist's thesis, depicting Chinese-American workers as violent and threatening to a white worker identified with a Catholic saint.)
posted by XMLicious at 3:31 PM on February 16, 2018

Happy New Year, everyone!
posted by pjmoy at 5:45 PM on February 16, 2018 [3 favorites]

Hey, Sui Sin Far! We read her "The Story of One White Woman who Married a Chinese" in my Chinese American Lit class in college.
posted by sunset in snow country at 7:35 PM on February 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Wow, that Bret Harte poem. WTH was he thinking? Who can have been his intended audience, that he assumed would understand the satire? If nothing else, I suppose it's a good demonstration of the fact that "ironic" or "satirical" racism is likely to be unhelpful.

Thanks for the pointer, Hypatia.
posted by Weftage at 7:41 AM on February 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yesterday I finished reading the book Driven Out, a detailed accounting of the anti-Chinese frenzy that took over the U.S. (mostly, but not only, on the West Coast) in the late 1800s. (Interview with the author.) If you want to know more about this “era of Chinese exclusion” that would be a good place to start.
posted by LeLiLo at 12:05 PM on February 17, 2018