This Global Asias Cyber Chat centers two areas of study critical to the future of Global Asias research—Asian American identities in the South and Afro-Asian intersection—through a conversation about two documentary films: Far East Deep South (2014) and Finding Samuel Lowe: From Harlem to China (2020). The Cyber Chat features filmmakers Baldwin Chiu and Paula Williams Madison along with several Global South scholars—Jordan Lynton Cox, Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, and Dhanashree Thorat.

The Cyber Chat will trace how these films are located in the broader context of Afro-Asian, Asian American, and Chinese migration narratives. What unique conversations about diaspora, memory, and belonging emerge at the intersection of these two films about Chinese labor migration in the U.S. South and Global South contexts? How do the films speak to the racialization of Chinese migrants in Mississippi, Jamaica, and the other transnational contexts covered in the films?