Book review

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.6.2.0225
• Pages: 225339-227
• Published date: 01 December 2014
• Date: 01 December 2014
• Author: Alexandra Gelbard

BOOK REVIEWS 225

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Kathleen López, Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History (Chapel Hill, NC:

The University of North Carolina Press, 2013) pb 339pp. ISBN: 9781469607139

Reviewed by Alexandra Gelbard

Chinese Cubans is an eight-chapter volume addressing the Chinese presence in

Cuba, diasporic ties to the homeland, the US and Caribbean, and multi-layered

identity concepts such as Chinese and Cuban. This work covers an extensive

time frame stemming from the initial ‘coolie trade’ dispersion (1847–74) of

Chinese labourers through the mid-twentieth century. In extending chrono-

logically beyond most existing work, López illuminates their presence within

the formation of the Cuban nation, various dispersion and inter-diaspora

movements within the Americas, the socio-structural impact, constructs of

nationhood and identity, and the effects of the post-Chinese (1949) and Cuban

(1959) revolutions.

López presents the introduction much like the rest of the volume: integrating

microhistorical, diasporic and hemispheric approaches that connect individual

experiences and concentrated localities to the larger collective process of

community formation, structural social forces, empirical and structural overlaps

with the African Diaspora, transnational economic and social f‌lows. She also

includes an epilogue contemporarily situating the Chinese presence and socio-

political relationship with Cuba.

To discuss how the Chinese presence in Cuba challenged the legal, political

and popular formulations of Cuban and Chinese identities, López includes a

discussion of identity formation and citizenship, which engages the integrated

social forces of racial constructs, class stratif‌ication, gender, socio-cultural

and economic networks, and generational distinctions throughout the various

temporal periods. Her extensively thorough review of archival documents in

English, Spanish and Chinese, in conjunction with oral histories, constructs a

vibrant picture of the day-to-day interactions that established the Chinese within

the national concept of Cubanidad as active members of Cuban society. This

micro-level analysis provides a solid basis for exploring larger constructs of

labour in the post-emancipation period, race and citizenship, and the relationship

of national and transnational identities.

The book is divided into three sections that chronologically analyse the

historical and socio-political epochs of the Chinese presence in Cuba and their

relationship to the Americas. The f‌irst section ‘From Indentured to Free’ contains

three chapters in which López situates the context of life resulting from the

semi-involuntary migration of Chinese ‘coolie labourers’ due to the changing

socio-economic shifts in labour demands, resulting from the success of the 1804

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