Sitting in Darkness

Perhaps the most popular of all canonical American authors, Mark Twain is famous for creating works that satirize American formations of race and empire. While many scholars have explored Twain’s work in African Americanist contexts, his writing on Asia and Asian Americans remains largely in the sha...

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Päätekijä: Hsu, Hsuan L.
Aineistotyyppi: Online
Kieli:englanti
Julkaistu: New York University Press 2024
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Linkit:ONIX_20240403_9781479843404_187
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author Hsu, Hsuan L.
author_browse Hsu, Hsuan L.
author_facet Hsu, Hsuan L.
author_sort Hsu, Hsuan L.
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description Perhaps the most popular of all canonical American authors, Mark Twain is famous for creating works that satirize American formations of race and empire. While many scholars have explored Twain’s work in African Americanist contexts, his writing on Asia and Asian Americans remains largely in the shadows. In Sitting in Darkness, Hsuan Hsu examines Twain’s career-long archive of writings about United States relations with China and the Philippines. Comparing Twain’s early writings about Chinese immigrants in California and Nevada with his later fictions of slavery and anti-imperialist essays, he demonstrates that Twain’s ideas about race were not limited to white and black, but profoundly comparative as he carefully crafted assessments of racialization that drew connections between groups, including African Americans, Chinese immigrants, and a range of colonial populations. Drawing on recent legal scholarship, comparative ethnic studies, and transnational and American studies, Sitting in Darkness engages Twain’s best-known novels such as Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, as well as his lesser-known Chinese and trans-Pacific inflected writings, such as the allegorical tale “A Fable of the Yellow Terror” and the yellow face play Ah Sin. Sitting in Darkness reveals how within intersectional contexts of Chinese Exclusion and Jim Crow, these writings registered fluctuating connections between immigration policy, imperialist ventures, and racism.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1371162025-07-18T09:44:26Z Sitting in Darkness Hsu, Hsuan L. Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism Perhaps the most popular of all canonical American authors, Mark Twain is famous for creating works that satirize American formations of race and empire. While many scholars have explored Twain’s work in African Americanist contexts, his writing on Asia and Asian Americans remains largely in the shadows. In Sitting in Darkness, Hsuan Hsu examines Twain’s career-long archive of writings about United States relations with China and the Philippines. Comparing Twain’s early writings about Chinese immigrants in California and Nevada with his later fictions of slavery and anti-imperialist essays, he demonstrates that Twain’s ideas about race were not limited to white and black, but profoundly comparative as he carefully crafted assessments of racialization that drew connections between groups, including African Americans, Chinese immigrants, and a range of colonial populations. Drawing on recent legal scholarship, comparative ethnic studies, and transnational and American studies, Sitting in Darkness engages Twain’s best-known novels such as Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, as well as his lesser-known Chinese and trans-Pacific inflected writings, such as the allegorical tale “A Fable of the Yellow Terror” and the yellow face play Ah Sin. Sitting in Darkness reveals how within intersectional contexts of Chinese Exclusion and Jim Crow, these writings registered fluctuating connections between immigration policy, imperialist ventures, and racism. 2024-05-12T06:18:00Z 2024-05-12T06:18:00Z 2024-04-03T10:12:17Z 2015 book ONIX_20240403_9781479843404_187 ONIX_20240403_9781479843404_187 OCN: 899211417 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/89469 9781479843404 9781479880416 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/137116 eng America and the Long 19th Century open access image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/89469/1/9781479843404_WEB.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/89469/1/9781479843404_WEB.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/89469/1/9781479843404_WEB.pdf New York University Press NYU Press 10.18574/nyu/9781479880416.001.0001 10.18574/nyu/9781479880416.001.0001 13ae9bf8-b4bf-47bb-be6d-71e5675ace48 9781479843404 9781479880416 NYU Press New York open access
spellingShingle Literature: history and criticism
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
Hsu, Hsuan L.
Sitting in Darkness
title Sitting in Darkness
title_full Sitting in Darkness
title_fullStr Sitting in Darkness
title_full_unstemmed Sitting in Darkness
title_short Sitting in Darkness
title_sort sitting in darkness
topic Literature: history and criticism
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
topic_facet Literature: history and criticism
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
url ONIX_20240403_9781479843404_187
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