Author Discusses Literary Representations of African Americans and Asian Americans

The Center for Women's & Gender Studies presents a talk by Julia Lee, author of "Interracial Encounters: Reciprocal Representations in African and Asian American Literatures, 1896-1937." 

Why do black characters appear so frequently in Asian American literary works and Asian characters appear in African American literary works in the early twentieth century? Interracial Encounters attempts to answer this rather straightforward literary question, arguing that scenes depicting Black-Asian interactions, relationships, and conflicts capture the constitution of African American and Asian American identities as each group struggled to negotiate the racially exclusionary nature of American identity.

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