A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Opening new perspectives in transpacific studies, Etsuko Taketani examines the genealogy and contours of the aerial imaginary and the corollary shifting planetary imaginary that evolved in a transnational space she names the “Black nuclear Pacific.” Following the first dropping of an atom bomb on humans and the subsequent military occupation of Japan by the United States, Black-Japanese encounters happened on a scale unimaginable before World War II. Analyzing texts by a diverse range of artists, writers, and political thinkers who had formative interactions with occupied Japan—including the NAACP’s Walter White, lawyer Edith Sampson, Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, and Malcolm X—Taketani uncovers African American cultural expressions that include a quasi–alien abduction narrative, the literary creation of a new tribe in the image of a rainbow, a Black futuristic apocalypse, and a racial fantasy of the Mother Plane.
Aerial Archives of Race tracks the Black networks and exchanges with Japan that provoked new ways of thinking about (human) races on planet Earth.
Etsuko Taketani is Professor of American Literature at the University of Tsukuba, Japan.
"In a triumph of transnational research, Etsuko Taketani delivers a deeply satisfying account of how aerial mapping inspired artists as varied as Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, Josephine Baker, and Theodor Seuss Geisel."—Judith Pascoe, author of On the Bullet Train with Emily Brontë: "Wuthering Heights" in Japan
"With her expert analysis of Malcolm X, NAACP leaders, Langston Hughes, and Lorraine Hansberry—among others—combined with her adroit interrogation of visuality, Etsuko Taketani has elevated scholarship in diverse fields, particularly African American Studies and the field in which she has pioneered: the Black Pacific."—Gerald Horne, author of Facing the Rising Sun: African Americans, Japan, and the Rise of Afro-Asian Solidarity
"Etsuko Taketani’s aerial worlds are a constant surprise. Mapping the space she calls the Black nuclear Pacific, Taketani develops a highly specific account of planetary imaginaries at a time of shifting state power. The result is a thrilling panorama of historical detail and speculative insight."—Kate Marshall, author of Novels by Aliens: Weird Tales and the Twenty-First Century
238 pp.6 x 9Illus: 16 b/w photographs
9780520425200$95.00|£80.00Hardcover
Dec 2025