The Inferior Woman

The Inferior Woman I II III IV V VI Some years, I can get my act together and find some piece of public domain fiction written by a Black author for Black History Month, and then…wander off for the rest of the year. I don’t make that choice with purpose, mind you. However, the other history and heritage months rarely show up with as much fanfare, and people have weirdly spent less time cataloguing the options. AAPI Heritage Month has one of the roughest times of it. Remember, while Filipinos reached North America around the same time as European settlers, and the Jamestown settlement listed an East Indian among the citizens in 1635, the United States started making it difficult for Asians to get into or stay in the country as early as 1790, lasting largely until the 1960s, not to mention literally herding Japanese Americans into concentration camps in 1942. Not only that, but despite the fears of “yellow perils” and so forth, Asian American didn’t exist as an identity until (also) the…