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