Wow! eBook
The Emotional Power of Music
Author(s): Kristen Jafflin (Author), Tom Cochrane (Editor), Bernardino Fantini (Editor), Klaus R. Scherer (Editor)
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Publication Date: April 25, 2023
- Language: English
- Print length: 320 pages
- ISBN-10: 0231209983
- ISBN-13: 9780231209984
Book Description
Angelina Y. Chin foregrounds the experiences of the many people who passed through Hong Kong without settling down or finding a sense of belonging, including refugees, deportees, “undesirable” residents, and members of sea communities. She emphasizes that flows of people did not stop at Hong Kong’s borders but also bled into neighboring territories such as Taiwan and Macau. Chin develops the concept of the “Southern Periphery”―the region along the southern frontier of the PRC, outside its administrative control yet closely tied to its political space. Both the PRC and governments in the Southern Periphery implemented strict migration and deportation policies in pursuit of border control, with profound consequences for people in transit. Chin argues that Hong Kong identity emerged from the collective trauma of exile and dislocation, as well as a sense of being on the margins of both the Communist and Nationalist Chinese regimes during the Cold War. Drawing on wide-ranging research,
Unsettling Exiles sheds new light on Hong Kong’s ambivalent relationship to the mainland, its role in the global Cold War, and the origins of today’s political currents.Editorial Reviews
Review
Bold and exquisite, this book exhumes from history a “Southern Periphery” at the doorstep of the People’s Republic of China. Nurtured by the visions and voices of forgotten exiles, refugees, and deportees falling through the cracks of conventional analytical categories―nations, borders, citizenship, and diaspora―the legacies of this unique political landscape still reverberate today. — Ching Kwan Lee, author of
Hong Kong: Global China’s Restive FrontierDoes geography shape destiny? How have the borders of land and sea that bind Hong Kong to China shaped the fates of Hong Kongers, many of whom fled CCP authoritarianism and found no other home amid the racist legacies of decolonization and the Cold War’s political divides, which fueled Hong Kong’s insecure sovereignty. Published in the aftermath of China’s sweeping National Security Law, Chin’s nuanced study of Hong Kongers’ limited mobility and precarious immobility throbs with poignant hindsight. — Madeline Y. Hsu, author of
The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority Unsettling Exiles introduces the Southern Periphery of the PRC: a place of permeable borders, political exiles, unwelcome migrants, unidentified corpses, idealists, grifters, and wary state apparatuses. Chin gives close and compassionate attention to people creating lives in circumstances they did not choose, all the while imagining a future China they could call home. A powerful argument that understanding the center requires acknowledging the loyalties, longings, and traumatic memories of those on the periphery. — Gail Hershatter, University of California, Santa CruzIn this pioneering and captivating book, Angelina Chin shows how Cold War Hong Kong became a dumping ground for Chinese refugees, deportees, and a host of other “undesirables.” Instead of finding cosmopolitanism and success, as the triumphal “Hong Kong story” goes, these exiles often faced despair and marginality. Unsettling indeed! — John M. Carroll, author of
The Hong Kong-China Nexus: A Brief HistoryStimulating and provocative. ―
China QuarterlyScholars of Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, will find this book extremely valuable, as will scholars of borders, migration, and the global Cold War…this book is a thoughtful and significant addition to
Hong Kong history, one that is sure to shape the field in years to come. ―
Captivating…
Unsettling Exiles vividly portrays the intimate experience of Chinese exiles… [and] paves the way for further dialogues and exploration concerning the Southern Periphery — Yuqing Qiu, Sciences Po, Paris, France ― China Perspectives
