Transpacific Community ─ America, China, and the Rise and Fall of a Cultural Network

In the turbulent years after World War I, the American novelist Pearl S. Buck, the African American singer and activist Paul Robeson, the left-wing journalist Agnes Smedley, and the Chinese authors Lao She and Lin Yutang sought to transform the terms by which the United States and China or, more broadly, "East" and "West" knew each other. Individually, they produced works that altered American conceptions of China and vice versa. Together, they collaborated on political projects that synthesized American and Chinese visions of equality. Their network drew from radical visions of political revolution and new technologies of communication. Their transpacific community upset traditional routes of power and articulated a new course for East-West cultural exchange.

Richard Jean So is assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago. He specializes in modern American, Chinese, and Asian-American literatures, and his work has appeared inRepresentations, Critical Inquiry, PMLA, American Literature,boundary 2, among other publications.