ABSTRACT
Asian American and African American bodies have problematic relationships. I immediately think of violence: those terrible grainy images of Soon Ja Du shooting Latasha Harlins; Korean Americans arming themselves in Los Angeles. These recent memories lead almost immediately to others — the Asian-owned convenience store in the Black neighborhood — into a racialized loop of asymmetrical opportunities and surveillances. The Asian American cannot come into proximity with the African American without activating metaphors of encroachment and use — metaphors that are all situated in ontologies of embodiment.
