a lecture by Rosanne Sia, PhD candidate in American Studies and Ethnicity, Transpacific Studies Dissertation Fellow

In the early Cold War, Asian American entertainers traveled on transpacific nightclub circuits that brought them into the vibrant cabaret culture of Havana, Cuba. In 1950s Havana they encountered the figure of the vedette china who was
folded into the Cuban national symbol of the mulata. This talk explores the meeting point between the “china doll” and the “vedette china” as Cold War transpacific flows that resulted from American expansion across the Pacific met with the legacies of Spanish empire in the Caribbean.