The Asian American Writing Movement and Black Radicalism

Abstract

This article reconsiders the genesis and formation of Asian American literature by focusing less on the Chin-Kingston debate and more on the impact of Black radicalism and the genre of antiracist anthologies. I explore Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers and Yardbird Reader 3 to examine the centrality of Black cultural revolution for the rise of Asian American literature, and the works of multiethnic anthologies within cultural nationalisms and emergent multiethnic movements. During the post–civil rights era of racial realignment, Black radical thought is the counterpoint to forced Asian ethnic assimilation; this Asian-Black sensibility had challenged an uncritical complicity with white supremacy, which had suppressed Black revolution and modeled Asian America. In Aiiieeeee!, the editors use the vernacular languages, performance styles, and oppositional consciousness of Black masculinity as a means to expose the contradictions of post–civil rights racial formations that disunite Asian and Black communities. In Yardbird Reader 3, the institutional and homosocial bonds between Ishmael Reed and Frank Chin became a crucial relationship to solidify the Asian American Writing Movement and multiethnic collaborations through Afro-Asian connections. Both works carved a niche in U.S. national culture by conceptualizing new models of multiethnicity and subsequently birthed a germinal literary sensibility.