Black Power, Yellow Power, and the Making of Revolutionary IdentitiesImages of upraised fists, afros, and dashikis have long dominated the collective memory of Black Power and its proponents. The “guerilla” figure—taking the form of the black-leather-clad revolutionary within the Black Panther Party—has become an iconic trope in American popular culture. That politically radical figure, however, has been shaped as much by Asian American cultural discourse as by African American political ideology. From the Asian-African Conference held in April of 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, onward to the present, Afro-Asian political collaboration has been active and influential. In Black Power, Yellow Power, and the Making of Revolutionary Identities, author Rychetta Watkins uses the guerilla figure as a point of departure and shows how the trope's rhetoric animates discourses of representation and identity in African American and Asian American literature and culture. In doing so, she examines the notion of “Power,” in terms of ethnic political identity, and explores collaborating—and sometimes competing—ethnic interests that have drawn ideas from the concept. The project brings together a range of texts—editorial cartoons, newspaper articles, novels, visual propaganda, and essays—that illustrate the emergence of this subjectivity in Asian American and African American cultural productions during the Power period, roughly 1966 through 1981. After a case study of the cultural politics of academic anthologies and the cooperation between Frank Chin and Ishmael Reed, the volume culminates with analyses of this trope in Sam Greenlee's The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Alice Walker's Meridian, and John Okada's No No Boy. |
Contents
| 3 | |
Translating Fanon Black and Yellow Power as American Anticolonialisms | 21 |
From Gorilla to Guerilla Defining Revolutionary Identity | 53 |
Power and the Ivory Tower Academics as Intellectual Guerillas | 82 |
Reading Resistance The Guerilla in Literature | 114 |
Promise vs Praxis The Legacies of Power | 143 |
Notes | 153 |
| 173 | |
| 187 | |
Other editions - View all
Black Power, Yellow Power, and the Making of Revolutionary Identities Rychetta Watkins No preview available - 2012 |
Black Power, Yellow Power, and the Making of Revolutionary Identities Rychetta Watkins No preview available - 2013 |
Common terms and phrases
academic According action activism activists aesthetic African American American and Asian American literary American literature anthologies anticolonialism argues artists Asian American become Black and Yellow Black Arts Black Panther Black Power canon Carmichael chapter Chin Civil Rights Cleaver collection colonialism color consciousness consider construction context continue create critical critique cultural define difference discourses early effects engage established Ethnic Studies experience Fanon figure Freeman functions Gidra guerilla Ibid Ichiro identity ideology illustrate important individual influence institutions internal issues Japanese liberation meaning Meridian militant model minority move Movement nationalist novel oppression Party political position Power period programs published race racial racism radical Reed relations relationship representation represents resistance Review revolution revolutionary rhetoric scholars seems self-determination social society strategy struggle subjectivity term texts tion tradition ultimately understanding University violence writers Yellow Power York