Warring Genealogies: Race, Kinship, and the Korean War (Critical Race, Indigeneity, and Relationality)

Warring Genealogies examines the elaboration of kinships between Chicano/a and Asian American cultural production, such as the 1954 proxy adoption of a Korean boy by Leavenworth prisoners. Joo Ok Kim considers white supremacist expressions of kinship—in prison magazines, memorials, U.S. military songbooks—as well as critiques of such expressions in Chicana/o and Korean diasporic works to conceptualize racialized formations of kinship emerging from the Korean War. Warring Genealogies unpacks writings by Rolando Hinojosa (Korean Love Songs , The Useless Servants) and Luis Valdez (I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges , Zoot Suit) to show the counter-representations of the Korean War and the problematic depiction of the United States as a benevolent savior. Kim also analyzes Susan Choi’s The Foreign Student as a novel that proposes alternative temporalities to dominant Korean War narratives. In addition, she examines Chicano military police procedurals, white supremacist women’s organizations, and the politics of funding Korean War archives. Kim’s comparative study Asian American and Latinx Studies makes insightful connections about race, politics, and citizenship to critique the Cold War conception of the “national family.” Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Note on Terminology 12 Introduction: Warring Genealogies 16 1. “Americans, Your Own Flesh and Blood”: Carceral Kinships of the Korean War 39 2. “It’s a Brown Place Korea Is”: The Asian-Latino Korean War 67 3. Sleuth Cities: East LA, Seoul, and Military Mysteries 92 4. Confederacy in Korea: Archiving the United Daughters in Susan Choi’s The Foreign Student 116 Coda 142 Notes 148 Bibliography 164 Index 174 "Warring Genealogies examines the racial legacies of the Korean War through Chicano/a cultural production and U.S. archives of white supremacy"-- Provided by publisher