Performativity in black internationalist poetics as exemplified in Robeson and Hughes

Abstract EN

This article explores the signs of Afro-orientalism and fantasies about the early twentieth-century peasants' movement in China as evident in Langston Hughes's "Roar, China!" (1938) and Paul Robeson's rendition of the Chinese national anthem "Chee Lai!" (1941).

It argues that black radical art in the Jim Crow era has unexpected roots in Russian Constructivism.

The author traces the writing of the two texts, including Russian and Chinese influences on them, as well as their eventual circulations.

The article analyzes how both works actively exhort and recruit their audiences and readers to be part of a global anti-imperial revolt.