If America Were Really China or How Christopher Columbus Discovered Asia

To appear in Rethinking American Studies — Media, Languages and Geographies, National Library of Sweden and Wallflower Press (UK) 2010.This text investigates the notion that America may well have been first “discovered” and peopled by migrants from what is now China; and concludes by wondering whether China has not become another America and whether America is now not about to become China; which in any case is another America. Between the introduction and the conclusion; the history of other imagined Americas is examined: the Americas that were not the USA (such as the French Caribbean island of Martinique and Cuba where Chinese coolies were lured and duped with contracts for America (Amérique; A-mei-li-ga); and the USA of the Chinese American which was not quite Utopia – an America from which Chinese were excluded between 1882 and WW2. The Story of Chan/Chen – a scenario for a Chinese American film yet to be made – is sketched out