The Asian-Owned Store and the Incommensurable Histories of War in Narratives of the City

Abstract

This essay reads the Asian-owned store as an analytical category along with the recurring motif of war in narratives of the inner city. Eschewing the common trope of the “black-Korean conflict” or a liberal yearning for cross-racial coalition, I show that the Asian-owned store in predominantly black neighborhoods is a multivalent site that reveals incommensurable histories of various wars waged by the US empire-state that deliberately creates unequal spaces that are racialized as either “ghetto” or “war zone.” Through a discussion of a boycott of a Korean-owned store in Dallas in 2012 along with a close reading of Nina Revoyr’s Southland (2003), which provides a genealogy of the anti-Japanese racism in Los Angeles during World War II and the anti-black racism and police brutality during the Cold War that erupted in the Watts rebellion in 1965, I ultimately argue that the “domestic” space of the store provides a critical lens through which we can chart the flexible strategies of US imperialism at home and abroad.

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