Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South

297 Pages·2010·3.808 MB·English

by  Leslie Bow

Partly Colored

Partly Colored
Asian Americans and Racial
Anomaly in the Segregated South
Leslie Bow
a
NEW Y ORK UNIVERS ITY P RESS
New York and London
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2010 by New York University
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bow, Leslie, 1962–
Partly colored : Asian Americans and racial anomaly in the segregated South / Leslie Bow.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978–0–8147–9132–5 (cl : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0–8147–9132–8 (cl : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978–0–8147–9133–2 (pb : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0–8147–9133–6 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Asian Americans—Southern States. 2. Asian Americans—Race identity—
Southern States. 3. Segregation—Southern States. 4. Southern States—Race relations.
I. Title.
F220.A75B69 2010
305.895’073075—dc22 2009048943
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials
to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Thinking Interstitially 1
1 Coloring between the Lines: 23
Historiographies of Southern Anomaly
2 The Interstitial Indian: 57
The Lumbee and Segregation’s Middle Caste
3 White Is and White Ain’t: 91
Failed Approximation and Eruptions of Funk in
Representations of the Chinese in the South
4 Anxieties of the ‘Partly Colored’ 123
5 Productive Estrangement: 159
Racial-Sexual Continuums in Asian
American as Southern Literature
6 Transracial/Transgender: 197
Analogies of Difference in Mai’s America
Afterword: Continuums, Mobility, Places on the Train 229
Notes 239
Works Cited 261
Index 273
About the Author 285
| v

For Willie and Sue Mae Bow
and
for Maya and Julian

Acknowledgments
I originally undertook this project in order to explore an omission.
My Chinese American parents were raised in Arkansas during the
Jim Crow era. How they negotiated the color line—not being invited
into their white classmates’ homes, not attending high school dances, for
example—is not something they often talk about, nor is it a history read-
ily conceivable in this now purportedly post-racial moment. I tried to
explain this prohibition of intimacy to a Midwesterner who questioned,
“Your mother couldn’t go to her high school dances?” in tones that con-
veyed incredulity. “Couldn’t” conjures up the image of Elizabeth Eckford
forcibly turned away from Little Rock Central High, a racist mob behind
her.
“I don’t mean that if she had shown up the National Guard would have
been called out,” I countered, feeling the enormity of filling a historical void.
To complicate matters, my mother remembers her absence differently: she
chose not to attend.
In what follows, I place perhaps undue significance on mere subtleties,
those moments in segregation-era culture that can be read in a dual reg-
ister. From the half-told stories of my parents, the ones that do not make
an appearance in the iconography of American race relations, I began an
exploration into, in part, what it means to survive within a (partially) hos-
tile culture with dignity intact. This book is thus dedicated to Willie and Sue
Mae Bow, whose example infuses the pages of this book and whose presence
personalized its writing. I thank Nancy Low, Steven Bow, Lori Carson, and
Melissa Deponte for sharing this legacy with me.
I am exceedingly fortunate to have been assisted in this project by col-
leagues in multiple academic communities—Asian American Studies, New
Southern Studies, Whiteness Studies, and American literature. I am indebted
to Anne Anlin Cheng, Daniel Y. Kim, and David Roediger for their encour-
aging and productive feedback on this manuscript. Their acute commentary
and attention have substantially enriched this work.
| ix