In 1970, Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver traveled with a delegation of American antiwar activists to visit Socialist Asia. Seven of the 11 travelers were women, most notably Elaine Brown of the BPP, and four of the delegation were people of color, including Asian American activists Alex Hing and Pat Sumi. This talk examines how gender and race shaped international political journeys during the Viet Nam War and introduces the concept of radical orientalism to characterize how American activists turned to socialist Asia, and in particular revolutionary Asian women, for political inspiration.
Judy Tzu-Chun Wu is a professor of history and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Ohio State University. She coordinates the OSU Asian American studies program and also co-edits Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies. Wu is the author of Dr. Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: The Life of a Wartime Celebrity (California 2005), a biography of the first American-born Chinese female physician. She recently published Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism (Cornell University Press 2013), a study of how the international travels of American antiwar activists shaped their political agendas and identities. She is working with Gwendolyn Mink on a political biography of Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color congressional representative.
Generously co-sponsored by the Intercollegiate Department of Africana Studies.
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