Neither Black Nor White: Asians in the American Racial Imaginary

Based on my recent memoir, Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America (Henry Holt, 2023), this talk explores the uneasy space Asian Americans occupy in the American racial imaginary. Combining lived experience and theory, I analyze how myths of the model minority and perpetual foreigner shore up anti-blackness and white supremacy. Ultimately, I argue for Asian Americans' vital role in cross-racial coalition-building and decolonization. 

 

Julia Lee is a Korean American writer, scholar, and teacher, currently lecturing in Okinawa, Japan, through the Fulbright program. She is the author of Our Gang: A Racial History of The Little Rascals and The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel; the novel, By The Book, which was published under the pen name Julia Sonneborn; and a memoir, Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America. She is an associate professor of English at Loyola Marymount University, where she teaches Black and Asian American literature. She lives with her family in Los Angeles.