Professor Leslie Bow and her book "Partly Colored":
The Other Segregated South
The Other Segregated South
By Jonathan Gramling
Part 1 of 2
Leslie Bow, professor of English and Asian American Studies at UW-Madison — and a
2011 Outstanding Woman of Color awardee at the university — grew up in the social
cauldron that was the San Francisco Bay area in the 1970s. She was attracted to literature
as much by what she didn’t see as much as what she saw.
“I think the things that I began to learn on my own or be interested in were things that I
never saw represented in the school curriculum as I was growing up,” Bow said. “And so
what drove me to choose teaching, academia and to work on racial issues, I think was at
that time a really expanding set of concerns. I think that the question had not expanded to
incorporate diverse viewpoints really or intellectual discussion of race. In the mid ‘80s,
especially for Asian American voices in the mainstream book marketplace, there was an
incredible explosion of materials, wonderfully enriching materials, not simply just middle
brow writing, but really complex considerations of what it means to be racialized in the U.S.”
With the explosion of materials written about people of color, there can be mixed feelings
on how helpful the flourish of new literary images can be.
Part 1 of 2
Leslie Bow, professor of English and Asian American Studies at UW-Madison — and a
2011 Outstanding Woman of Color awardee at the university — grew up in the social
cauldron that was the San Francisco Bay area in the 1970s. She was attracted to literature
as much by what she didn’t see as much as what she saw.
“I think the things that I began to learn on my own or be interested in were things that I
never saw represented in the school curriculum as I was growing up,” Bow said. “And so
what drove me to choose teaching, academia and to work on racial issues, I think was at
that time a really expanding set of concerns. I think that the question had not expanded to
incorporate diverse viewpoints really or intellectual discussion of race. In the mid ‘80s,
especially for Asian American voices in the mainstream book marketplace, there was an
incredible explosion of materials, wonderfully enriching materials, not simply just middle
brow writing, but really complex considerations of what it means to be racialized in the U.S.”
With the explosion of materials written about people of color, there can be mixed feelings
on how helpful the flourish of new literary images can be.
Sometimes that interest is not necessarily for the right reasons,” Bow said about stories about people of color. “People
especially tend to fetishize Asian culture. I think that you probably have seen this too in the explosion of African American
women’s writing in the late ‘80s. It was a kind of a parallel sort of movement. The writing was suddenly new and people felt
they could enter into the lives of others through the literary texts.
The interest in what pre-revolutionary China was like, I think that a lot of people tried to feed a certain curiosity — I won’t say a
cultural expropriation of the lives of other, but I do think there was that motivation as well.”
And so, while the exposure and expansion of images may be helpful, its full impact may only be superficial with the
mainstream taking what it wants and ignoring the rest.
“There is a very positive view in which you can see the expansion of literary texts and scholarship, representing a real
genuine move to really explore the diversity of the United States, what histories have been excluded, what voices get
excluded,” Bow said. “On the other hand, you could take a more cynical approach, the idea of what is really being consumed
in these literary texts, what is being expropriated for the mainstream culture. It’s kind of like taking a more cynical view of the
mainstream and something like hip hop culture in the United States. What drives that fascination? What drives that
integration? Is it a selective approach to taking the culture of people of color in ways that allow mainstream culture
to ignore other aspects of what makes those cultures? Are we substituting literary texts for actual interaction with others?
Last year, Bow published a scholarly book Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South,
which looks at the interstitiality — the in betweenness — of Asian Americans in the Jim Crow South, a system that only saw
people in terms of black and white.
Next issue: Partly Colored and the Jim Crow South
especially tend to fetishize Asian culture. I think that you probably have seen this too in the explosion of African American
women’s writing in the late ‘80s. It was a kind of a parallel sort of movement. The writing was suddenly new and people felt
they could enter into the lives of others through the literary texts.
The interest in what pre-revolutionary China was like, I think that a lot of people tried to feed a certain curiosity — I won’t say a
cultural expropriation of the lives of other, but I do think there was that motivation as well.”
And so, while the exposure and expansion of images may be helpful, its full impact may only be superficial with the
mainstream taking what it wants and ignoring the rest.
“There is a very positive view in which you can see the expansion of literary texts and scholarship, representing a real
genuine move to really explore the diversity of the United States, what histories have been excluded, what voices get
excluded,” Bow said. “On the other hand, you could take a more cynical approach, the idea of what is really being consumed
in these literary texts, what is being expropriated for the mainstream culture. It’s kind of like taking a more cynical view of the
mainstream and something like hip hop culture in the United States. What drives that fascination? What drives that
integration? Is it a selective approach to taking the culture of people of color in ways that allow mainstream culture
to ignore other aspects of what makes those cultures? Are we substituting literary texts for actual interaction with others?
Last year, Bow published a scholarly book Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South,
which looks at the interstitiality — the in betweenness — of Asian Americans in the Jim Crow South, a system that only saw
people in terms of black and white.
Next issue: Partly Colored and the Jim Crow South
| Professor Leslie Bow received a 2011 Outstanding Woman of Color recognition from the University of Wisconsin-Madison on April 20. |
