The Peculiar Afterlife of Slavery

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Introduction : the Chinese question in the early afterlife of slavery -- "Earliest pioneers" of white literature of the West during Reconstruction. The "heathen Chinee" and Topsy in Bret Harte's narratives of the West -- Mark Twain's Chinese characters and the fungibility of blackness -- Ambrose Bierce's critique of blackface minstrelsy and anti-Chinese racism -- "Pioneers" of Asian American and African American literatures at the turn of the twentieth century. Representations of gender and slavery in Sui Sin Far's early fictions -- Reading the minstrel tradition and U.S. empire through Charles Chesnutt's The marrow of tradition.