GUIDE TO AFRO-ASIAN HISTORY
Despite the social framing of African and Asian Diasporas as two separate phenomena, both are intricately connected throughout the cultural, political and economic histories in the Americas and Europe. In North America, Asian communities are racially categorized as exotic, meek, and the “model minority,” while Blackness deemed criminal, dangerous, and aggressive, both situated as diametrical “opposites.” In the Caribbean islands of Guyana, Trinidad, Cuba, Jamaica, and in the Latin American nations of Panama, Mexico, Brazil, and Costa Rica, Asian identity and politics are situated in somewhat radically different contexts to African identity and ancestry, due to enslavement, indentured labor, and proximity. While white supremacy aims to drive a racial wedge between the two communities in America (and somewhat in other places in the Western Hemisphere), a closer look through careful research illuminates shared struggles against political terrorism, government repression, and surveillance. Key friendships such as the bond between Malcolm X and Yuri Kochiyama, as well as the marriage between Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs, demonstrates the radical Afro-Asian solidarity of the past, while cultural collectives such as NYC-based BUFU (By Us For Us) builds on the futurity of Black-Asian collaboration. The following resources listed are by no means exhaustive, but a primer in creating a more in-depth understanding between what appears to be two radically different communities.
Documentaries/Visual:
Mountains that Take Wing: Angela Davis and Yuri Kochiyama (Full Documentary)
Music, Afro Asian Politics and Culture, "Jazz" and a Vision for Revolution: An Evening with Fred Ho
PDFs:
Afro-Asian Encounters: Culture, History, and Politics
Sixty Years of Asian-African Solidarity
Chinese Freedom Fighters in Cuba: From Bondage to Liberation, 1847-1998
Chutney, Metissage, and Other Mixed Metaphors: Reading Indo Caribbean Art in Afro Caribbean Contexts
Afro-Asian and Afro-Indigenous Linguistic Contacts in Spanish America
Kickin’ The White Man’s Ass: Black Power, Aesthetics, and the Asian Martial Arts
Books:
Resounding Afro Asia: Interracial Music and the Politics of Collaboration
From Resistance to Rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean Struggles in Britain
Africa in the Indian Imagination: Race and the Politics of Postcolonial Citation
Afro-Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections between African-Americans and Asian-Americans
The African Diaspora in Trade Routes and Cultural Memories
Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th Century Black America
The East is Black: Cold War in China and Black Radical Imagination
Articles:
The BUFU Collective Explores the Power of Black and Asian Unity
Connecting the Disconnected: when South Asians accuse East Africans of Cultural Appropriation
