Historical Readings on #BlackAsianSolidarity

Recently, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture hosted a fascinating panel discussion entitled, “From Binaries to Bridges: Black Liberation and Model Minority Mutiny.” The panel explored Black and Asian American racial formation and the history of Afro-Asian solidarity. The featured panelists were William Jelani Cobb; Ellen D. Wu; Deepa Iyer; and Soya Jung. Check out the hashtag #BlackAsianSolidarity on Twitter for insights and photos from the event. In this post, I offer a few seminal historical readings on Afro-Asian solidarity for those who are interested in further exploring this topic. Readings are arranged by date of publication.

• Ernest Allen, Jr., “When Japan was Champion of the ‘Darker Races’: Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism,” The Black Scholar 24 (1994): 23-46.
• Ernest Allen, Jr. “‘Waiting for Tojo’: The Pro-Japan Vigil of Black Missourians, 1932-1943,” Gateway Heritage (1995): 38-55.
• Reginald Kearney, African American Views of the Japanese: Solidarity or Sedition? (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998).
• Robin D.G. Kelley and Betsy Esch, “Black Like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution,” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society  1, no. 4 (1999): 6-41.
• Marc S. Gallicchio, The African American Encounter with Japan and China: Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).
• Vijay Prashad, Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001).
• Gerald Horne, “Tokyo Bound: African Americans and Japan Confront White Supremacy,” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, Volume 3, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 16-28.
• Yukiko Koshio, “Beyond an Alliance of Color: The African American Impact on Modern China,” Positions, Vol. 11 (Spring 2003): 183-215.
• Bill V. Mullen, Afro-Orientalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004).
• Gerald Horne, Race War: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (New York: New York University Press, 2004).
• Heike Raphael-Hernandez and Shannon Steen, eds., AfroAsian Encounters: Culture, History, Politics (New York: New York University Press, 2006).
• Fred Ho and Bill V. Mullen, eds., Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections between African Americans and Asian Americans (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008).
• Nico Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).
• Yuichiro Onishi, Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th Century Black America, Japan, and Okinawa (New York: New York University Press, 2013).
• Robeson Taj Frazier, The East is Black: Cold War China in the Black Radical Imagination (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).
• Shailaja Paik, “Building Bridges: Articulating Dalit and African American Women’s Solidarity,” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Volume 42, Numbers 3-4 (Fall/Winter 2014): 74-96.
• Keisha N. Blain, “‘[F]or the Rights of Dark People in Every Part of the World’: Pearl Sherrod, Black Internationalist Feminism, and Afro-Asian Politics during the 1930s,” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, Volume 17, No. 1-2 (2015): 90-112.