Selina Lai-Henderson Receives 1921 Prize in American Literature for Groundbreaking Exploration of W. E. B. Du Bois's Impact in Maoist China.
Selina Lai-Henderson, associate professor of American literature and history, won the 1921 Prize in American Literature (tenured category) with her article, "You Are No Darker Than I Am: The Souls of Black Folk in Maoist China" (PMLA, Sep 2023).
The essay examines W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903) outside the historical and racial context of the United States by exploring the impact of the book’s Chinese translation in 1959 China in light of Du Bois’s historic visit to the country in the same year. Situated in the critical formation of Afro-Asian engagements during the Bandung era, Du Bois’s work was pivotal to China’s reassertion of what it means to be “black” on the global stage of the proletariat revolution.