This dissertation establishes a space to explore Black-Asian tropes in African American literature written since the 1980s. I examine African American literary works that feature Black-Asian relations, encounters, and alliances. I argue that a distinct kind of discourse is occurring when African American literature feature Black-Asian tropes; it is a discussion that decenters and has the potential to disrupt common debates of Black-White readings of American literature, in general. I start my analysis with the 1980s because I am interested in AfroAsian motifs in Contemporary African American literature. In 1984, Velina Hasu Houston’s drama, American Dreams, was performed on a off-Broadway stage by the Negro Ensemble Company, and featured an African American-Japanese couple coming home to the husband’s non-receptive relatives in Harlem, New York. In 1988, Octavia Butler’s Adulthood Rites was published and depicted a Black-Chinese half-human, half-alien being trying to understand his alterity. In 1993, Ishmael Reed’s Japanese By Spring was published and illustrated how an African American college professor attempts to politically align himself with a Japanese college president in the hopes of obtaining tenure at a predominantly White college. In the 2000s, Jacqueline A. Sue’s Cornbread and Dim Sum: A Heart Glow Romance (2004) and Angela Weaver’s No Ordinary Love (2009) featured romantic relationships between African American women and Chinese men. The core of my analysis is to interpret the shared experiences between African Americans and two Asian American groups, Japanese and Chinese. Each author’s literary imagination seeks to call into existence a Black-Asian presence. History, law, and some social science help explain the relationships represented in each text. In each chapter, I discuss forgotten histories, such as the impact of Japanese and Chinese emigrants on the American labor force of the 1800s; the relocation of American soldiers to Kansas due to segregation laws in other parts of the United States during the 1950s; African American supporters of the Pro-Japan movements in the 1930s; and the effect of American racial laws on interracial couples prior to the US Supreme Court ruling on Loving vs. Virginia of 1967. These historical references are included in literature across genres, including drama, science fiction, satire, and romance, and cover topics on colorism, multiethnic identity, and interracial relationships. Furthermore, in this study, I attempt to address a popular cultural term, Blasian, that encapsulates contemporary experiences of African and Asian Americans in the United States. By the end of the dissertation, I define and discuss what Blasian Narratives are and create a literary and cultural niche for exploring more Blasian experiences.
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