Partly Colored

2012 Honorable mention for the Book Award in Cultural Studies from the Association for Asian American StudiesArkansas, 1943. The Deep South during the heart of Jim Crow-era segregation. A Japanese-American person boards a bus, and immediately is faced with a dilemma. Not white. Not black. Where to sit?By elucidating the experience of interstitial ethnic groups such as Mexican, Asian, and Native Americans-groups that are held to be neither black nor white-Leslie Bow explores how the color line accommodated-or refused to accommodate-&quote;other&quote; ethnicities within a binary racial system. Analyzing pre- and post-1954 American literature, film, autobiography, government documents, ethnography, photographs, and popular culture, Bow investigates the ways in which racially &quote;in-between&quote; people and communities were brought to heel within the South's prevailing cultural logic, while locating the interstitial as a site of cultural anxiety and negotiation.Spanning the pre- to the post- segregation eras, Partly Colored traces the compelling history of &quote;third race&quote; individuals in the U.S. South, and in the process forces us to contend with the multiracial panorama that constitutes American culture and history.