From Bruce Lee to Samurai Champloo, how Asian fictions fuse with
African American creative sensibilities In this study, Crystal S.
Anderson explores the cultural and political exchanges between
African Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians over the last four
decades. To do so, Anderson examines such cultural productions as
novels (Frank Chin's Gunga Din Highway 1999], Ishmael Reed's
Japanese by Spring 1992], and Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle
1996]); films (Rush Hour 2 2001], Unleashed 2005], and The Matrix
trilogy 1999-2003]); and Japanese animation (Samurai Champloo
2004]), all of which feature cross-cultural conversations. In
exploring the ways in which writers and artists use this
transferral, Anderson traces and tests the limits of how Afro-Asian
cultural production interrogates conceptions of race, ethnic
identity, politics, and transnational exchange. Ultimately, this
book reads contemporary black/Asian cultural fusions through the
recurrent themes established by the films of Bruce Lee, which were
among the first--and certainly most popular--works to use this
exchange explicitly. As a result of such films as Enter the Dragon
(1973), The Chinese Connection (1972), and The Big Boss (1971), Lee
emerges as both a cross-cultural hero and global cultural icon who
resonates with the experiences of African American, Asian American,
and Asian youth in the 1970s. Lee's films and iconic imagery
prefigure themes that reflect cross-cultural negotiations with
global culture in post-1990 Afro-Asian cultural production. Crystal
S. Anderson, Elon, North Carolina, is an associate professor of
English at Elon University. Her work has been published in African
American Review, MELUS, Extrapolation, and Ethnic Studies Review.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!