Synopses & Reviews
With a Foreword by Vijay Prashad and an Afterword by Gary OkihiroHow might we understand yellowface performances by African Americans in 1930s swing adaptations of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, Paul Robeson's support of Asian and Asian American struggles, or the absorption of hip hop by Asian American youth culture?
AfroAsian Encounters is the first anthology to look at the mutual influence of and relationships between members of the African and Asian diasporas. While these two groups have often been thought of as occupying incommensurate, if not opposing, cultural and political positions, scholars from history, literature, media, and the visual arts here trace their interconnections and interactions, as well as the tensions between the two groups that sometimes arise. AfroAsian Encounters probes beyond popular culture to trace the historical lineage of these coalitions from the late nineteenth century to the present.
A foreword by Vijay Prashad sets the volume in the context of the Bandung conference half a century ago, and an afterword by Gary Okihiro charts the contours of a “Black Pacific.” From the history of Japanese jazz composers to the current popularity of black/Asian “buddy films” like Rush Hour, AfroAsian Encounters is a groundbreaking intervention into studies of race and ethnicity and a crucial look at the shifting meaning of race in the twenty-first century.
Review
“In this volume, Amy Best offers critical youth studies an epistemological compass, a collection of essays that spans across nations, methods, sexualities, ethnicities, generations and age, reflecting provocatively on how we create knowledge with, for and by youth. This book promises to be a classic for the next generation of scholars perched to engage critically, respectfully, theoretically and provocatively with youth, to inscribe a twenty-first century signature on critical youth studies.”
-Michelle Fine,co-author of Working Method: Research and Social Justice
Review
“Should be of value to researchers doing ethnographic field studies with youth.”
-Choice,
Review
“A powerful and compelling book that represents cutting-edge new directions in critical youth studies. This is a passionate call for a critical moral consciousness that will create more humane spaces for today's youth in our complex global culture.”
-Norman K. Denzin,co-editor of The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research
Review
"This edited volume is a powerful and compelling reminder of the many methodological and ethical challenges that researchers face when working with youth. Firmly located within an emergent tradition of scholarship that privileges a more self-conscious and critical mode of inquiry and analysis, these thirteen contributions critically address, and also redress, the power imbalance inherent in doing qualitative research with youth by conducting non-exploitative and more reflexive researches... Reflecting provocatively on how we create knowledge with and for youth, this is a cutting-edge work that promises to open up novel and innovative avenues in theory, methodology, and representation in youth research and beyond. This is definitely a must-read for those interested in doing research with youth and equally to a wider readership committed to experimenting with novel methodologies that are more self-reflexive and less authoritative."-Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,
Review
“Succeeds at placing blacks and Asians at the center of the Americas, inviting productive dialogue against the notion that interaction between these groups is out of the ordinary.”
-Journal of American Ethnic History,
Review
“This collection is evidence of the important topics and perspectives generated by illuminating AfroAsian linkages.”-The Journal of African American History,
Review
“As fresh and exciting as it is important. This crucial book changes the conversation around American Studies and Ethnic Studies in key ways, challenging scholars to light out for previously-uncharted places on our mental maps in which borders are interrogated and challenged, alliances forged through imagined communities, commerce, popular culture, or politics are investigated and probed, and questions that are simultaneously new, and half a century old, are revivified. This volume, the first interdisciplinary anthology dealing with AfroAsian encounters, stands to become a landmark work in the field.”
-Shelley Fisher Fishkin,Stanford University
Review
“What critical anthologies do best is to present. . . . And AfroAsian Encounters does that.”
-Journal of Asian American Studies,
Review
“A ground-breaking interdisciplinary anthology entirely devoted to the studies of historical and contemporary African/Asian interactions.”
-African American Review,
Synopsis
From youth culture to adolescent sexuality to the consumer purchasing power of children en masse, studies are flourishing. Yet doing research on this unquestionably more vulnerablewhether five or fifteen—population also poses a unique set of challenges and dilemmas for researchers. How should a six-year-old be approached for an interview? What questions and topics are appropriate for twelve year olds? Do parents need to give their approval for all studies?
In Representing Youth, Amy L. Best has assembled an important group of essays from some of todays top scholars on the subject of youth that address these concerns head on, providing scholars with thoughtful and often practical answers to their many methodological concerns. These original essays range from how to conduct research on youth in ways that can be empowering for them, to issues of writing and representation, to respecting boundaries and to dealing with issues of risk and responsibility to those interviewed. For anyone doing research or working with children and young adults, Representing Youth offers an indispensable guide to many of the unique dilemmas that research with kids entails.
Contributors include: Amy L. Best, Sari Knopp Biklen, Elizabeth Chin, Susan Driver, Marc Flacks, Kathryn Gold Hadley, Madeline Leonard, C.J. Pascoe, Rebecca Raby, Alyssa Richman, Jessica Taft, Michael Ungar, Yvonne Vissing, and Stephani Etheridge Woodson.
About the Author
Heike Raphael-Hernandez is professor of English at the University of Maryland in Europe. She is editor of
Blackening Europe: The African American Presence.
Shannon Steen is assistant professor of theater, dance, and performance studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Vijay Prashad is author of Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity. Gary Okihiro is author of Common Ground: Reimagining American History.