“You Are No Darker Than I Am”: The Souls of Black Folk in Maoist China

Abstract

Abstract How do we as scholars of transnational US literary studies understand W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903) outside the historical and racial context of the United States? Anyone familiar with the text will agree that it primarily focuses on the unique condition of African American existence or, as Du Bois himself puts it, “the strange meaning of being black” at the turn of the last century. But to what extent is this “black” experience historically, nationally, or even racially bound? An exploration of the impact of the Chinese translation of Souls in 1959 China reveals that the fluidity of historical, national, and racial boundaries goes beyond the limits of mere cultural negotiations. Situated in the critical formation of Afro-Asian engagements during the Bandung era and Du Bois's visit to China in 1959, Souls was pivotal to China's reassertion of what it means to be “black” on the global stage of proletariat revolution.