Across Global Souths: Asian Migrations through the U.S. South and the Circum-Caribbean

Abstract

Across Global Souths: Asian Migrations through the U.S. South and the Circum-Caribbean investigates Asian/American cultures, politics, and relationships across multiple Souths, with an emphasis on the U.S. South and the Caribbean. Edward Said’s foundational Orientalism (1978) has been expanded and extrapolated to multiple frameworks that situate Asian peoples and populations in terms of the East versus the West; this concept continues to circulate in the United States, where “Asian America” is largely envisioned as only populating the East and West coasts. The Across Global Souths project reframes the conversation with an emphasis on journeys to and from multiple Souths. The guest editors consider the broader geopolitical designation of “South” in the United States, including Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, and the U.S. Gulf Coast as a region in and of itself. Asian Americans in Dixie provides a critical reference point, defining the South as “a region of the United States and a space connected to and part of other transnational spaces” (Joshi and Desai, 2013, 4). Grounded within recent scholarly developments in the field of American Studies, we have invited further reflections on the diasporic condition of the category “Asian,” as well as the diasporic condition of the category “Southerner,” simultane-ously challenging notions of an exclusively white, Euro-American U.S.