The Flip Side - Old China Hands and the American Popular Imagination, 1935-1985

Benefiting from recently catalogued archival materials, The Flip Side: Old China Hands and the American Popular Imagination, 1935-1985 evaluates the influence of an ensemble of well-known Americans born and bred in China - Pearl S. Buck, Henry R. Luce, Owen Lattimore and John Hersey - after their return to the United States of America. The children of missionaries, all contributed in significant ways to the globalisation of the -American ideal- in the 20th century, even as each sought in different roles - as publishers, as novelists, as scholars - to centre Chinese and -Asian- values and concerns in the anglophone public sphere. The resulting torque, as Chinese ideas and values met the projection of American -soft- power and governmentality, created a uniquely bilateral, global imaginary where respect for China as an emerging force encountered Western reaction. For these -old China hands-, the return to the USA resulted in then-unique and discrepant socio-cultural formations: Buck-s in