Includes bibliographical references (pages 177-223) and index.
Contents:
Preface : liberty's other histories -- Introduction : circumoceanic memory : Chinese racialization in Brazilian perspective -- Brazil's Oriental past and future -- Emancipation to immigration -- Performing yellowface and Chinese labor -- The Chinese question in Brazil -- Between diplomacy and fiction -- The yellow peril in Brazilian popular music -- Conclusion : imaginative geographies of Brazil and China.
Summary:
"In Mandarin Brazil, Ana Paulina Lee explores the centrality of Sinophobia to the Brazilian nation-building project, tracing the role of cultural representation in producing racialized national categories. Lee considers depictions of Chineseness in Brazilian popular music, literature, and visual culture, as well as archival documents such as Brazilian and Qing dynasty diplomatic correspondence about opening trade and immigration routes between Brazil and China. In so doing, she reveals how Asian racialization helped to shape Brazil's image as a racial democracy. Mandarin Brazil begins during the second half of the nineteenth century, during the traditional period when enslaved labor became unfree labor--an era when black slavery shifted to "yellow labor" and racial anxieties surged. Lee asks how colonial paradigms of racial labor became a part of Brazil's nation-building project, which prioritized "whitening," a fundamentally white supremacist ideology that intertwined the colonial racial caste system with new immigration labor schemes. By considering why Chinese laborers were excluded from Brazilian nation-building efforts while Japanese migrants were welcomed, Lee interrogates how Chinese and Japanese expansionist ambitions via labor exportation reinforced Brazil's whitening project. Mandarin Brazil contributes to a new conversation in Latin American and Asian American cultural studies, one that considers Asian diasporic histories and racial formation across the Americas."--Page 4 of cover.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.