An Afro-Chinese Caribbean: Cultural Cartographies of Contrariness in the Work of Antonio Chuffat Latour, Margaret Cezair-Thompson, and Patricia Powell

Caribbean Quarterly

Volumn 50, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 26-43

  Yun, Lisa Li Shen ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84895043730     PISSN: 00086495     EISSN: 24706302     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00086495.2004.11672231     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. Stuart, Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory, eds. Patrick, Williams and Laura, Chrisman (NY: Columbia UPress, 1994), 395.
2. Lim, Bee Leng, “Eugene Chen,” in The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, ed. Lynn, Pan (Singapore: Archipelago Press 1998), 253.
3. This article includes research material from Lisa Yun's forthcoming book COOLIE: From Under the Hatches into the Global Age. Also see Lisa, Yun, “Under the Hatches: Coolie Ships and Nineteenth Century Narratives of the Pacific Passage,” Amerasia Journal, 28:2 (Fall 2002); Lisa, Yun, “Linking African and Asian in Passing and Passage: The Pagoda and The True History of Paradise,” SOULS: Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 3:3 (Winter 2001); Lisa, Yun and Ricardo, Laremont, “Chinese Coolies and African Slaves in Nineteenth Century Cuba,” The Journal of Asian American Studies 4:2 (June 2001): 99–122.
4. Numerous historians have produced scholarship that includes Chinese indenture in the West Indies. Contemporary historians such as Walton Look Lai, Marlene Kwok Crawford, Trev Sue-A-Quan, have produced the most recent work. Others have produced family histories, such as Helen and Philip Atteck.
5. Margaret, Cezair-Thompson True History of Paradise (N Y: Plume, 2000, rep. 1999).
6. Randall, Kenan's interview, “Margaret Cezair-Thompson,” BOMB (Fall 1999): 55–59.
7. It is important to note writers of Chinese descent who have addressed Chinese identity in essays, memoirs, short stories, novels, poems, such as Victor Chang, Easton Lee, Jan Lo Shinebourne, Meiling Jin, Willi Chen, among others..
8. A large body of work exists on the historical exclusion of Chinese, with most studies centering on exclusion in United States, Canada, Australia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Also, East Indian migration and cultural formation in the Caribbean offer some comparison to that of the Chinese, though obviously there are distinctions and clear differences. Among many studies on the role of East Indians in the Caribbean, Virajini Munasinghe examines the East Indian ethnic “estrangement from the state” in her book Callaloo or Tossed Salad? (Ithaca: Cornell UPress 2001
9. Cezair-Thompson, 9
10. Cezair-Thompson, 9.
11. Patricia, Powell, The Pagoda (NY: Knopf, 1998), 142
12. See Wang, Gungwu and Wang, Ling-Chi, eds., The Chinese Diaspora (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1998), which includes a revisiting of global Chinese diaspora paradigms such as “sojourning,” “settling,” “planting roots.” Also see Aihwa, Ong's Flexible Citizenship (Durham: Duke UPress, 1999), in which she examines “cultural citizenship” and Chinese diaspora.
13. Antonio Chuffat Latour, Apunte historico de los chinos en cuba (Habana: Molina, 1927). Thanks to Kathleen Lopez, doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan, for our productive dialogues on the Chinese of Cuba and for helping me locate another copy of Chuffat's text. My thanks to Gabriela Veronelli, graduate student of PIC (Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture) at SUNY Binghamton, for her fine and nuanced translation work, thus refining my original readings of Chuffat's text Thanks to Professor Donette Francis, scholar of Caribbean studies at SUNY Binghamton, for her insightful suggestions for revising and strengthening this article.
14. For the ranchmen, a negro was nothing, a Chinese even less.
15. Chuffat, 124.
16. Chuffat, 5.
17. Chuffat, 43.
18. Chuffat, 81
19. Chuffat, 31, 61.
20. Chuffat, 98–101.
21. The mention of Thomas Gerard's recruiting from the barracoons appears in Laura, Hall, “The Arrival and Settlement of the Chinese in 19th Century British Guiana,” in The Chinese Diaspora Volume 71, eds. Wang, Gungwu and Wang, Ling-Chi (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1998), 96. For further details on Chinese coolie trade to the West Indies, see Persia, Campbell, Chinese Coolie Emigration to Countries within the British Empire (NY: Negro Universities Press, 1922); Walton, Look Lai The Chinese in the West Indies (Jamaica: UWI Press, 1998). See more sources, including labour and maritime histories, and coolie traffic to Cuba, listed in Lisa, Yun and Ricardo, Laremont, “Chinese Coolies and African Slaves in Nineteenth Century Cuba,” The Journal of Asian American Studies 4:2 (June 2001): 99–122; Lisa, Yun, “Linking African and Asian in Passing and Passage: The Pagoda and The True History of Paradise,” SOULS: Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 3:3 (Winter 2001); Lisa, Yun, “Under the Hatches: Coolie Ships and Nineteenth Century Narratives of the Pacific Passage,” Amerasia Journal, 28:2 (Fall 2002).
22. Ortiz's explication of this concept actually contains negative language regarding Chinese. He briefly referred to the Chinese in the context of other immigrants to Cuba (including Jewish, French, and North Americans) but chose a pejorative term for the Chinese—as “yellow Mongoloids” from Macao and Canton. See Fernando, Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (Durham: Duke U Press, 1947), 113.
23. Stuart, Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory, eds. Patrick, Williams and Laura, Chrisman (NY: Columbia U Press, 1994), 398.