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Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear
From invading hordes to enemy agents, a great fear haunts the West!
The “yellow peril” is one of the oldest and most pervasive racist ideas in Western culture—dating back to the birth of European colonialism during the Enlightenment. Yet while Fu Manchu looks almost quaint today, the prejudices that gave him life persist in modern culture. Yellow Peril! is the first comprehensive repository of anti-Asian images and writing, and it surveys the extent of this iniquitous form of paranoia.
Written by two dedicated scholars and replete with paintings, photographs, and images drawn from pulp novels, posters, comics, theatrical productions, movies, propagandistic and pseudo-scholarly literature, and a varied world of pop culture ephemera, this is both a unique and fascinating archive and a modern analysis of this crucial historical formation.
The “yellow peril” is one of the oldest and most pervasive racist ideas in Western culture—dating back to the birth of European colonialism during the Enlightenment. Yet while Fu Manchu looks almost quaint today, the prejudices that gave him life persist in modern culture. Yellow Peril! is the first comprehensive repository of anti-Asian images and writing, and it surveys the extent of this iniquitous form of paranoia.
Written by two dedicated scholars and replete with paintings, photographs, and images drawn from pulp novels, posters, comics, theatrical productions, movies, propagandistic and pseudo-scholarly literature, and a varied world of pop culture ephemera, this is both a unique and fascinating archive and a modern analysis of this crucial historical formation.
400 pages, Paperback
First published February 11, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 31, 2013
The authors present the history of anti-Asian stereotyping in a way that makes it clear just how pervasive the negative images and tropes were (and continue to be); anyone who has viewed mainstream films, TV, or comic books will soon realize as they read that the stereotypes are present in our minds even if we think that we didn't know them, or had managed to educate ourselves beyond them. I'm a Black American woman and many of the stereotypes felt familiar in a strangely personal way -- obviously different from anti-Black images, but the pervasiveness and vicious nature of the images -- well, that felt familiar. As a librarian, I'd recommend this book to faculty, students, and staff. As a resident of a U.S. city, I'd recommend it to everyone.
July 7, 2021
4.5 but rounding up bc I learned A LOT & will def revisit this.
August 5, 2016
Yellow Peril! An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear, edited and introduced by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yates, is a volume that “juxtaposes fragments of different times and different places to illustrate connections not otherwise imagined or understood.” With a smirking yellow octopus possessively hugging the globe on its cover, the book is a fascinating archive of the long-held tradition of the West to view Asia as a threat.
Though “yellow” as a racial signifier in the Western imagination has come to represent those now classified as “East Asians,” it has to be remembered that its first noted usage was applied to “South Asians.” This book documents and comments on “how the Westernization process has formulated a villainous Yellow Peril Other to stabilize its own identity.”
The book is divided into three parts. The first part “The Imagined West” unpacks the mythos of “the West.” The second part “Manifest Destinies” presents how the Westernization of Europe played out conceptually. And the final part “Indispensable Enemies” presents the history of yellow perilism within the sphere of the US nation-state and US global interests.
Yellow Peril! An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear is witty, insightful and thought-provoking.
Though “yellow” as a racial signifier in the Western imagination has come to represent those now classified as “East Asians,” it has to be remembered that its first noted usage was applied to “South Asians.” This book documents and comments on “how the Westernization process has formulated a villainous Yellow Peril Other to stabilize its own identity.”
The book is divided into three parts. The first part “The Imagined West” unpacks the mythos of “the West.” The second part “Manifest Destinies” presents how the Westernization of Europe played out conceptually. And the final part “Indispensable Enemies” presents the history of yellow perilism within the sphere of the US nation-state and US global interests.
Yellow Peril! An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear is witty, insightful and thought-provoking.
March 9, 2014
An interesting look at the origins and manifestations of the xenophobia that has resulted from the " Always an East from West" worldview, told through one of the best primary source collections I have seen.
June 2, 2021
Interesting compilation of literature, though I was expecting more.
dnf
August 31, 2024I had to drop this! I really really wanted to finish it but it was just a slug to get through, to the point where i felt myself feeling resentful towards the book and not absorbing anything from it anymore. It was super patchwork, which is to be expected from a reader, but truly here there are just little snippets of introduction and explanation and then you have to dive on in. This works well for some of the primary sources, even though the subject matter and ideologies therein are vile, but when it comes to the works of theory that the authors reprint here i found it really really hard to follow how they were supposed to fit into a greater thesis or narrative. It got more and more difficult, also not a good sign for my hopes of pushing through it. Probably i should just read around some more first and then come back to this. And maybe i still will--definitely i got some interesting insights on early early history from the beginning of the book, and i really liked how it incorporated visual sources
June 11, 2021
This isn't your typical historical narrative; the editors have organized a mix of primary sources, secondary interpretations, and visual artifacts for a new kind of history / call to action. They begin with showing that "yellow peril" initially started as anti-Christianity (lumping in Arabs, Jews, pagans, etc.), then morphed into Christendom representing civilization (and anything eastern, "oriental," or Asian represented "yellow peril"). The ancient and modern representations of Asians as being diseased (or even AS disease) are particularly sad.
The author ends with a plea to be less defensive of our "homeland," however we define it, and instead to view global history from the points of view of the many people and nations who have participated, who rarely act irrationally but usually in their own interest, as we all do. We are a global "home" and must resist the narrative of fighting the influence of the Other.
The author ends with a plea to be less defensive of our "homeland," however we define it, and instead to view global history from the points of view of the many people and nations who have participated, who rarely act irrationally but usually in their own interest, as we all do. We are a global "home" and must resist the narrative of fighting the influence of the Other.
June 7, 2025
Quite dense and academic at times, but overall a very informative, interesting, eye-opening read. The 90 or so included collected images really drive the point home. Even though this was published a few years ago, I think even before Trump’s first term, certain parts of the book feel like they could literally be talking about today. This book draws a through line across more than 100 years of American history, and millennia of world history, and makes you realize that our current political and racial climate has *very* old precursors
February 9, 2025
This was a rather interesting and informational read, although its layout and writing style may make it difficult to process for some people. It may get uncomfortable at times, but its contents are very important if you want to understand anti-Asian racism and xenophobia. However, I didn't 100% agree with all of the viewpoints presented in this book.
July 23, 2021
Interesting primer on the subject. Much more accessible than Said's Orientalism, which I didn't understand 90% of. A lot of the extracts seemed unnecessarily truncated, I'd liked to have read more of them without having to search them out myself.
February 14, 2014
Reading this book so reminded me of having an assignment from my college sociology teacher. The object would be to document, ad nauseam, everything (and I do mean everything) that you can find about the fear of Asians that have been printed over the last hundred or so years.
Unfortunately, the authors decided to take it back even further to the time of the Romans and the fear of the Germanic tribes and the Persian Empire. Their premise is that there has always been a European bias against the ‘others’. Whether they were from the East or the North East. Starting with the Huns and other tribes that crossed into Europe south of the Danube and East of the Rhine, these were ‘barbarians’ of the top order who later sacked Rome and destroyed most of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium).
As these tribes settled into Europe and converted to the Universal (Roman) Catholic Church, they were no longer the ‘barbarians’ at the gate but the protectors of the gate. So slowly, inexorably the line of ‘Peril’ was pushed to the East until after the Colonial/Imperialism the fear abated except for those people from Near and Far Asia. Europeans realized that they were a minority in the world and would have to use their superiority over the non-white races to stay on top.
Episodes like the Indian (Sepoy) Rebellion in India and the Boxer Rebellion in China kept the fear of the East just below the surface beginning in the late nineteenth century. Colonial governments knew they were outnumbered and at any time these subject could rebel and murder them (i.e. Mau Mau’s in Kenya).
Once these subjugated people began to emigrate to Europe and the US to do the most menial of labor, it was realized that they could easily overwhelm the ‘white’ nations, either directly (by revolution) or as a ‘fifth column’. We begin to see racial quotas establish in the early twentieth century in response to this fear.
This fear and the recorded and discussion of its effect on societies is the focus of the last half of the book. There is more than enough documentation to serve as a source for a doctoral dissertation. Probably way to detailed and dry for most people.
Zeb Kantrowitz
Unfortunately, the authors decided to take it back even further to the time of the Romans and the fear of the Germanic tribes and the Persian Empire. Their premise is that there has always been a European bias against the ‘others’. Whether they were from the East or the North East. Starting with the Huns and other tribes that crossed into Europe south of the Danube and East of the Rhine, these were ‘barbarians’ of the top order who later sacked Rome and destroyed most of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium).
As these tribes settled into Europe and converted to the Universal (Roman) Catholic Church, they were no longer the ‘barbarians’ at the gate but the protectors of the gate. So slowly, inexorably the line of ‘Peril’ was pushed to the East until after the Colonial/Imperialism the fear abated except for those people from Near and Far Asia. Europeans realized that they were a minority in the world and would have to use their superiority over the non-white races to stay on top.
Episodes like the Indian (Sepoy) Rebellion in India and the Boxer Rebellion in China kept the fear of the East just below the surface beginning in the late nineteenth century. Colonial governments knew they were outnumbered and at any time these subject could rebel and murder them (i.e. Mau Mau’s in Kenya).
Once these subjugated people began to emigrate to Europe and the US to do the most menial of labor, it was realized that they could easily overwhelm the ‘white’ nations, either directly (by revolution) or as a ‘fifth column’. We begin to see racial quotas establish in the early twentieth century in response to this fear.
This fear and the recorded and discussion of its effect on societies is the focus of the last half of the book. There is more than enough documentation to serve as a source for a doctoral dissertation. Probably way to detailed and dry for most people.
Zeb Kantrowitz
February 11, 2014
I received an ARC of this book through Netgalley. And this book comes out tomorrow! So I thought I'd get my review out tonight.
This is an interesting elaboration on the "primary source collection" concept, see books like Opera: a history in documents, Women's Letters: America from the Revolutionary War to the Present etc. Lots of great books like this around. However this book does it a little differently, which is that it mixes selected contemporary essays, transcribed and translated historical documents, and photos of relevant art (mostly political cartoons.) Sort of a one-stop-shop on the topic. This is very effective! Especially as so much of racism is in visual forms, and not just written, so going through the effort of collecting (and getting permission to print, which is a lot of work) all of these archival images is great.
I was impressed by the breadth of time represented here as well. Documents from 1000AD all the way through a Google vs. China political cartoon from 2010. Would be suitable both as an addition to an academic library or as a supplemental text or even main textbook for a history class.
One problem I had is that the historical documents are listed along with the academic essays in the Table of Contents in an indistinguishable manner, as they are mingled together under topical chapters. Now hopefully most people can figure out from the titles of the essays vs. the documents what is what, but undergrads can make some surprising jumps. Hopefully in the non-proof edition this formatting will have been sorted out to make it clearer what's an artifact and what's an essay.
This is an interesting elaboration on the "primary source collection" concept, see books like Opera: a history in documents, Women's Letters: America from the Revolutionary War to the Present etc. Lots of great books like this around. However this book does it a little differently, which is that it mixes selected contemporary essays, transcribed and translated historical documents, and photos of relevant art (mostly political cartoons.) Sort of a one-stop-shop on the topic. This is very effective! Especially as so much of racism is in visual forms, and not just written, so going through the effort of collecting (and getting permission to print, which is a lot of work) all of these archival images is great.
I was impressed by the breadth of time represented here as well. Documents from 1000AD all the way through a Google vs. China political cartoon from 2010. Would be suitable both as an addition to an academic library or as a supplemental text or even main textbook for a history class.
One problem I had is that the historical documents are listed along with the academic essays in the Table of Contents in an indistinguishable manner, as they are mingled together under topical chapters. Now hopefully most people can figure out from the titles of the essays vs. the documents what is what, but undergrads can make some surprising jumps. Hopefully in the non-proof edition this formatting will have been sorted out to make it clearer what's an artifact and what's an essay.
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February 2, 2016Amazing illustrations, but content wasn't that much different than Said or other work on orientalism
July 26, 2016
An essential primer for all. Jack the man!!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews