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This chapter explains the local discourse on blackness and contrasts it with other discourses on blackness. It argues that townspeople differ in their level of access to global discourses of blackness. It makes the case that, although diasporic discourses of blackness are present in Ingenio, black people translate them in multiple ways and do not always see themselves as part of a diasporic community. This counters the assertion that the descendants of African slaves are bound to experience a double consciousness and that the global black community uses the memory of slavery as a resource for cultural, political, and ideological struggles. The chapter puts forward that thinking of the diaspora as a process as well as a condition helps us to understand better the multiplicity of black identities that exist and the extent to which global and local discourses interact to produce new conditions and processes.

This introductory chapter lays out the groundwork for this volume's primary argument regarding the role that states and empires play in structuring the Yemeni diasporic community. Diasporic groups, which are generated outside the direct involvement of empires, have not been looked at in terms of the structuring power of empire and state. Hence the chapter jumpstarts this discussion by reviewing the prevailing literature concerning Yemenis or Hadrami—the people who are the focus of this book—and how they are considered in relation to state power. And given the book's particular focus on Yemeni interactions with states and empires in the Horn of Africa, this chapter also presents a brief historical overview of the involvement of empires and the formation of the state in the area.

One of the more exotic of the Asian diasporic communities of seventeenth-century Southeast Asia was that of the Japanese who formed Nihon-machi, or Japantowns, in a number of court cities, Asian trading ports, and European fortified cities. In large part, these communities developed as a consequence of Japanese participation in the Shuinsen, or “red seal” trade, under which official passports were issued to select merchant groups. The formation of Nihon-machi in Southeast Asian ports was an episode lasting but one or two generations, but there had been a broader engagement of Japan with East-Southeast Asia over a longer time frame. This chapter seeks to examine the political and commercial impacts that the Japanese traders and adventurers had on local Southeast Asian societies. It also discusses Japan's trading legacy in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the impacts that the overseas connection had on Japan's own internal economy and politics.

This book is concerned with the performance and reception of popular music and song by Tibetan refugees living in north India. To explore the ways in which cultural boundaries are understood, negotiated, and enacted by Tibetan refugees, this book largely focuses on nontraditional music that has found a receptive audience in this diasporic community. Both the content and design of this book are informed by the theme of echoes, as both a theoretical notion and as experience.

Atiya Fyzee arrived in London in September 1906, when politics in Britain was undergoing major changes. London at the time was still a great imperial city, the nexus of the British Empire’s political authority, financial power, and commercial dominance. Atiya met many different individuals over the course of her stay, including former colonial officers and British gentry, famous Muslim reformers, and nationalist leaders. Based on Atiya’s account of her encounters with local elites and prominent Indians in London, this chapter discusses empire, Britain’s thriving social scene, and diasporic communities in Edwardian Britain. It notes the comparative frequency of mixed marriages between Indians and Britons and Atiya’s time spent with fellow students and staff at the Maria Grey Training College.

This chapter explains the neglect of the Republic of Vietnam in the American historical memory. It makes a personal appeal to the diasporic community for help in addressing this problem. Echoing the volume's view about the importance of memories, the chapter urges everyone who lived under the Republic of Vietnam to write memoirs, to grant interviews, and to share their memories. The most important kind of help from the community, the chapter argues, is to provide primary sources for historians. In addition, the chapter contends that the community should support Vietnamese studies, value the humanities and the social sciences as possible careers for their children, and support intellectual freedom.

This chapter places Ameryka-Echo within the context of other Polish American and ethnic newspapers, which adopted the letter-writing culture, and explores the different ways in which the editors used letters from readers, facilitating the creation of communities of readers-writers. Through the maintenance of the close connection between the newspaper and its readers, and the inclusion of the content provided by them, the press created a national as well as diasporic community of Polish immigrants, formed readers' networks loyal to a particular newspaper, and guided the immigrants in their adaptation to the new country through the adoption of personal service journalism and advice sections. Ameryka-Echo remained at the forefront of the Polish-language newspapers, engaging its readers in the process of direct communication and featuring long-lasting and popular sections based on correspondence from readers.

This chapter is devoted to the Sikh diaspora, an important subject given the increasing population of this community worldwide. In fact, the Sikh diaspora represents an important component of Indian migration in that Sikhs constitute a disproportionately high percentage of Indian immigrants worldwide. Hence the chapter examines three countries with the largest Sikh communities outside Punjab—the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, with emphasis on key landmarks of Sikh migration to each of these host countries. It also provides a brief overview of a number of dominant characteristics of Sikh diasporic communities worldwide, such as their community factions, the proliferation of gurdwaras in these communities, their political participation in their host countries, and so forth.

The post-World War II period saw the increased migration of non-anglophone Europeans and Asians to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, resulting in the formation of hybridized diasporic communities that by the 1990s necessitated a revised rhetoric of nationhood. The chapter also examines the development of a Pacific literature and the concept of a ‘new Oceania’ founded on transformation of the past and ‘free from the taint of colonialism’, and transcending colonial patterns of regional and local identity. It discusses fiction writing in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific by immigrant writers after World War II and the Vietnam War, followed by immigrants fleeing from violence in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Malaysia. Finally, it looks at the emergence of a new generation of ethnically hybridized, culturally mobile writers who attempt to move beyond diasporic binaries to tackle issues of race, language, and belonging from transnational perspectives in an era marked by changes in publishing practices in a global literary marketplace.

This chapter examines Hmong women's changing roles by examining their experiences in refugee camps and diasporic communities. It includes profiles of three well-educated female Hmong leaders and discusses the challenges they face as women, as raced women, and as subjects within the patriarchal culture of the Hmong American community. These women have been selected out of a survey of fourteen women due to limitations of space, and in order to briefly illustrate the tenacity of Hmong American women, their successes, contributions, and challenges: the profiles of Senator Mee Moua, Dr. Phua Xiong, and Mai Zong Vue. These women were chosen because they are well known in their communities and are viewed as significant role models for younger generations. Their profiles represent the vast experiences of Hmong American women in their efforts to make Hmong society a better place for future Hmong generations.

Arabian Peninsula and Arab countries have always been linked to Muslims of Central Asia and the Caucasus. However, because of the Russian and Soviet parenthesis, the Islamic connections between these regions weakened. With the end of the Soviet Union, an Islamic cooperation started and took mainly two channels: pilgrimages (hajj) and diaspora. Although it was de facto impossible during the Soviet period, hajj has become a very important Islamic point of contact between Saudi Arabia and the post-Soviet sphere, contributing to the development of Salafism in the region. Meanwhile, Uzbek and Uighurs, the two Central Asian diasporic communities present in Saudi Arabia for several decades, have also contributed to the development of Islamic cooperation between the Arabian Peninsula and the new post-Soviet Republics.

This chapter examines the film Paris Blues (1961) to foreground several key points expressed in the present volume. It connects the fictional jazz diasporas of Paris Blues to the very real lives of present-day African American jazz musicians, as well as the author's own experiences residing in Paris. Despite a ferocious political revolt by French of African descent in the 2000s, current jazz diasporas still favor African Americans, and there is a separation between the two diasporic communities. But in the end it is relationships rather than differences that make jazz diasporas. The relationships and exchanges of power among African Americans, white Americans, white French, and French of African descent constantly build, collapse, and rebuild to support the survival of jazz and jazz people.