The Politics of Love and History: Asian Women and African Men in East African Literature

This paper traces a chronology of representations of Asian East Africans in literature written in English. Considering novels, short stories, and films produced over the past fifty years, it focuses on love stories between Asian and black characters. The paper highlights the significance of these love stories to the evocation of diasporic histories, and the making and breaking of national mythologies. It is particularly concerned with the rare telling of relationships between Asian women and black men. The paper most fully works towards an understanding of the heightened and brittle symbolic resonance of these love stories within the political historiographies offered by the texts.