Description:

With contributions from activists, artists, and scholars, Afro Asia is a groundbreaking collection of writing on the historical alliances, cultural connections, and shared political strategies linking African Americans and Asian Americans. Bringing together autobiography, poetry, scholarly criticism, and other genres, this volume represents an activist vanguard in the cultural struggle against oppression.

Afro Asia opens with analyses of historical connections between people of African and of Asian descent. An account of nineteenth-century Chinese laborers who fought against slavery and colonialism in Cuba appears alongside an exploration of African Americans’ reactions to and experiences of the Korean “conflict.” Contributors examine the fertile period of Afro-Asian exchange that began around the time of the 1955 Bandung Conference, the first meeting of leaders from Asian and African nations in the postcolonial era. One assesses the relationship of two important 1960s Asian American activists to Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. Mao Ze Dong’s 1963 and 1968 statements in support of black liberation are juxtaposed with an overview of the influence of Maoism on African American leftists.

Turning to the arts, Ishmael Reed provides a brief account of how he met and helped several Asian American writers. A Vietnamese American spoken-word artist describes the impact of black hip-hop culture on working-class urban Asian American youth. Fred Ho interviews Bill Cole, an African American jazz musician who plays Asian double-reed instruments. This pioneering collection closes with an array of creative writing, including poetry, memoir, and a dialogue about identity and friendship that two writers, one Japanese American and the other African American, have performed around the United States.

Contributors : Betsy Esch, Diane C. Fujino, royal hartigan, Kim Hewitt, Cheryl Higashida, Fred Ho,
Everett Hoagland, Robin D. G. Kelley, Bill V. Mullen, David Mura, Ishle Park, Alexs Pate, Thien-bao Thuc Phi, Ishmael Reed, Kalamu Ya Salaam, Maya Almachar Santos, JoYin C. Shih, Ron Wheeler, Daniel Widener, Lisa Yun

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From Publishers Weekly

This essay collection reveals the historical events, political activities and aesthetic ideas that link African-Americans and Asian-Americans. Although a chasm is sometimes presumed to exist between the two groups, this book reveals the two diasporas' intersecting paths from the 19th century to the present day. Lisa Yun's Chinese Freedom Fighters in Cuba: From Bondage to Liberation, 1847–1898 is a groundbreaking examination of the treatment of Chinese coolies who could be brought in as indentured laborers... [and] used as slaves. Statements (one in 1963, the other after the King assassination) by Mao Zedong in support of the struggle for African-American civil rights introduce essays exploring the ties between black liberation movements and Asian-American activism. Diane Fujino's insightful biographies of Richard Aoki and Yuri Kochiyama are especially fascinating. The essays on the arts, including crossover pieces (e.g., African-Americans and the martial arts, Asian-Americans and hip hop), are particularly accessible, and Ishmael Reed's rare original account of the origins of modern Asian American literary production, while terse, is of significant historical value. An eclectic array of creative writing expressing Afro-Asian interaction includes poems, creative nonfiction and a performance piece by memoirist David Mura and novelist Alexs Pate ( Amistad ). Readers should not be put off by the occasional Marxist or nationalist tenor of these pieces because Ho and Mullen's collection offers a fresh perspective well worth the effort. (June)
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Review

“ Afro-Asia is a long overdue tribute to the long history of cross-ethnic intellectual connections, as well as a celebration of artistic collaborations, between African Americans and Asian Americans. . . . Fred Ho and Bill Mullen have produced a book that is groundbreaking in its intellectual rigor, as well as aesthetically pleasing. . . . Afro-Asia is highly recommended to anyone interested in how radical ideas and concepts travel through and across cultural boundaries and eventually bloom with new brilliance.” - Carol Huang, Journal of African American History

“At a moment when the national media are abuzz with predictions of a new era of post-racial politics, Fred Ho and Bill Mullen’s anthology on the intersections of African and Asian Americans remind us of the complex ways that race has shaped and continues to shape our lives in this country. Afro Asia compiles a diverse set of essays that illuminate a repressed tradition, spanning the early 19th century onwards, of ‘creative political and cultural resistance grounded in Afro-Asian collaboration and connectivity.’” - Manan Desai , Against the Current

“ Afro Asia preserves and promotes critical thinking and activism in a global culture. Here, with incisive writings from diverse intellectuals, artists, and activists, Fred Ho and Bill V. Mullen make a vital contribution towards liberation praxis that challenges the perceived permanence of manufactured distrust and division.”— Joy James , author of Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics

“Fred Ho and Bill V. Mullen have assembled a first-rate dossier of Afro-Asian work. It is equal parts lyrical and analytical. Flies like a butterfly; stings like a bee.”— Vijay Prashad , author of Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity

“ Afro-Asia is a long overdue tribute to the long history of cross-ethnic intellectual connections, as well as a celebration of artistic collaborations, between African Americans and Asian Americans. . . . Fred Ho and Bill Mullen have produced a book that is groundbreaking in its intellectual rigor, as well as aesthetically pleasing. . . . Afro-Asia is highly recommended to anyone interested in how radical ideas and concepts travel through and across cultural boundaries and eventually bloom with new brilliance.”

(Carol Huang, Journal of African American History )

“At a moment when the national media are abuzz with predictions of a new era of post-racial politics, Fred Ho and Bill Mullen’s anthology on the intersections of African and Asian Americans remind us of the complex ways that race has shaped and continues to shape our lives in this country. Afro Asia compiles a diverse set of essays that illuminate a repressed tradition, spanning the early 19th century onwards, of ‘creative political and cultural resistance grounded in Afro-Asian collaboration and connectivity.’”

( Manan Desai , Against the Current )