Henrique Yagui Takahashi
Dartmouth College - Postdoc Researcher
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Henrique Yagui Takahashi is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. His research focuses on Comparative Ethnic and Race Studies, Afro-Latin American and Asian Diasporic Cultures, Urban Studies, and Media Studies. Henrique's current book project compares the transition of Lima's Chinatown and São Paulo's "Japantown" from Asian diaspora community spaces to multicultural tourist attractions and gentrified urban spaces from the 20th to the 21st centuries. His work uses a multi-sited ethnography approach, unstructured interviews, and archival research to explore how orientalization and gentrification intersect with the predominant narrative influenced by the racial ideologies in Latin America, such as the "racial democracy myth" and "mestizaje," as observed through press publications, monumental arts, food cultures, and digital platform videos.
Afro-Brazilian Memory in São Paulo “Japantown”: Racial Entanglements in Marília Marz’s “Indivisivel"
São Paulo's "Japantown" (Portuguese: Bairro "Oriental" da Liberdade) is widely recognized as the largest concentration of Japanese descendants in Brazil. However, this ethnic urban enclave has recently been reclaimed as one of the city's most significant Afro-Brazilian historical sites. This popular tourist destination has become a contested memory zone between local Asian businessmen and grassroots movements such as Movimento Negro (Black Brazilian Movement) and Movimento dos Aflitos (comprising devotees of the Chapel of the Afflicted and Afro-Brazilian activists). This article examines "Indivisível" [Indivisible] (2019), a comic by Afro-Brazilian cartoonist Marília Marz, as a representation of the current contested memory between Asian and Afro-Brazilian perspectives in Liberdade through graphic narrative. While most research on "Indivisível" situates it within the social and historical context of Afro-Brazilian memory in contemporary Liberdade, Marília Marz's dual role as both first-person character and narrator is crucial for understanding the comic within the broader context of memory liberation and contestation in the neighborhood. I argue that Marz undergoes a subjective process of identification with both Blackness and Japanese pop culture, which coexist in tension within her personal experience. This unique perspective enables her to navigate and represent the complex interplay between Afro-Brazilian and Asian narratives in Liberdade.
Reframing Asian American Studies: Beyond Borders Through Hemispheric and Transpacific Lenses
Addressing this year’s theme of re-orienting Asian American Studies, this roundtable brings together scholars who broaden the geographical, temporal, and spatial scope of Asian American Studies. Their work explores Asian Latina/o communities across the Americas, shifting the focus of Asian American Studies and challenging traditional subjects, objects, and geographies within the field. They deconstruct and decenter the term “American” in Asian American Studies, a term that is often monopolized within the U.S. overlooking Central, South, and Latin Americans. Olivieri and Serrano-Muñoz, in edited volume East Asia, Latin America, and the Decolonization of Transpacific Studies (2022) argued that the expanding field of transpacific studies, which focuses on the movement of people, goods, and ideas in and around the Pacific, must involve Latin America to dismantle its North-centric knowledge production. The roundtable participants will discuss questions related to the diverse Asian diasporic communities and their histories in Latin America. Participants will address these questions drawing from their interdisciplinary scholarship and hemispheric and transpacific methodologies and approaches that uncover the hidden stories and experiences within these communities in Asian American Studies.
Henrique Yagui Takahashi
Dartmouth College - Postdoc Researcher
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