Introducing radical counter-visions of race and slavery, The Coolie Speaks focuses on Chinese labourers who worked side by side with African slaves in Cuba. The Chinese wrote of their peculiar yet prescient experiences of new bondage in a slave society that was transitioning from slavery to abolition. Through an examination of these narratives of resistance, the book re-conceptualizes diasporic representations and histories to offer transformative re-examinations of "Chinese," "African," and "Latino" in mutually imbricated contexts. In that historical moment of multi-racial encounter, trans-culturation, and intense daily conflict, Yun argues, discourses of "freedom" and the contract institution emerged as a globalizing system of enslavement. With a historical introduction and literary readings, this first-time examination of writings by Chinese coolies and of a next generation Afro-Chinese author, raises timely theoretical and methodological questions regarding freedom, race, diaspora, trans-nationalism, and globalization.
This interdisciplinary work, grounded in literary studies, history, law and philosophy will interest scholars in American studies, Africana studies, Caribbean/Latin American studies, Asian studies, and Asian American studies, among others.