Further, the critical race studies scholar Eduardo Bonilla-Silva , has argued that American racial formations are increasingly becoming transformed into a Latin American model, which means that some former non-white minority groups have over time come to be incorporated into, or at least come closer to, American whiteness. Non-white Swedish literature is defined as all book publications that have been written in Swedish by an author who belongs to a visible minority group and having a background outside of Europe or on the Balkan Peninsula.
This means that books published in Sweden in Arabic, Hindi or Somali have been excluded, as well as translations from other languages to Swedish. Among the titles, Swedish Asians are mentioned or appear as characters in about 50 novels, poetry collections, autobiographies, play manuscripts and anthology contributions written by non-Asian authors, and almost all of these instances derive from the s and onwards.
A dozen or so of the 80 works emanate from mixed Asians, and only about 15 titles have Asian immigrants or second-generation Asians as authors.
The strong female dominance among the Swedish Asian authors is a little more difficult to explain, not least because it is otherwise male authors who dominate among the other minority groups. As for where, how and when Asians occur in various titles that belong to the non-white Swedish literature and which are written by non-Asian authors, it must be said from the outset that Swedish Asians are not particularly common at all as characters. In about 50 books where Swedish Asians appear, it is usually only in the passing, and there are only a handful of more complete portrayals of an Asian character; therefore, it is rare that Asian characters are even named.
Since then, adopted children from Southeast and Northeast Asia have always dominated the world of transnational adoption numerically and proportionally, with Korea being the single largest country of origin in Sweden and in almost all other adopting Western countries. It is also a fact that there are several references to adopted Asian children in the non-white Swedish literature, often from Korea but also sometimes from China and Vietnam.
When it comes to gender, it is much more common for Asian girls or women to appear in the non-white Swedish literature than Asian boys or men, and the former usually turn up in connection with, and especially as, partners of non-Asian men. Asian women are most often portrayed as originating from Thailand and sometimes also from the Philippines. The acquaintance himself had one, and knew people who could directly import them.
Several men have bouquets and extra jackets in their hands. Dad recognises their type. He has seen them before. They are Swedish men waiting for their Thai wives.
They have met on the internet and become engaged without having met and now the men have their jackets with them to show that they are kind and to avoid that the girls become shocked by the cold. But gentle men do not need to order whore wives from the other side of the globe, he thinks and continues toward the exit. Khemiri 16— However, not all adult Asian women who are together with white men are immigrants; many of them are also adopted Asian women.
Adult Asian men, unlike adult Asian women, are rarely or never conceived as partners to majority or minority women. Sometimes adult Asian men also appear as a group, and then it is almost always about male Japanese tourists who are often equipped with cameras Kamyab 17—21 ; Mahmood —16 ; Rohi — Both Asian women and men are frequently described in derogatory terms that allude to their appearance and sometimes also to their supposed manner of speaking Swedish.
Another theme that turns up in some of the works is non-Asian minority characters who are considered to exhibit certain physical features associated with being Asian. Asians sometimes also occur in relation to migration and integration issues, but it it is not common at all. Continuing with how Asians write about themselves, far from all texts that emanate from Swedish Asians treat how it is to be Asian in Sweden.
The texts that appear in this study are, in other words, only those that thematise issues related to how it is to be Asian in Sweden, and they constitute less than half of the total number of Swedish Asian texts. Said the classmates. In the next moment, they could sit and gasp that the black skulls should be thrown out.
Both Astrid Trotzig, Anna von Melen and Patrik Lundberg, all of whom are adopted from Korea, further testify that they are sometimes also mistaken for being Asian immigrants or even Japanese tourists and that they are sometimes addressed in English Lundberg 24 ; von Melen 95 ; Trotzig To continue with mixed Asians, they are sometimes mistaken for being adoptees. By far, the most common theme in texts written by Asian women centers around being racially sexualised. You are so fucking tight down there.
When the Volvo man waved down the window pane, I thought he wanted to make me be aware of something. But the man in the car just stared at me and my daughter. Eliza had infected Hampus with yellow fever. He could now only turn on Asian girls. Hampus knew that he had dropped to the same level as the Thai Suedis — colonial paedophiles who took advantage of their economic power to sexually and economically oppress women with bodies like year-old boys Wong — Patrik Lundberg and Sofia French, who are adopted from Korea, both compare how Swedes and other Westerners view Asian women and Asian men differently in their respective autofictional novels:.
In contrast to Asian men, women have a reputation for being small sex machines that are always willing and more accessible than white women.
The number of texts written by Asian men who raise the issue of being an Asian man in Sweden is only a handful, and they have mostly adopted men as authors. It has happened that I have been offered to go to blind dates with girls, but I have never dared due to what would happen when they realise that I am Asian?
I know how people talk about Asian men. We can be cute, but never good looking and masculine. And then we have small dicks Lundberg Danjel Nam, who is adopted from Korea as well, has also testified to the same type of everyday racism that is linked to specific racial stereotypes of Asian men:. A month ago I was on my way home from work. It was a normal Friday evening, and I had worked late, so there was already a lot of partying going on.
The route starts with taxi drivers who ask if I want a taxi. Then a pub appears with lots of rock music. And there, right there, I meet a company that is constantly on the verge of dancing into me because it is so crowded and dark on the pavement. Then I pass a pedestrian crossing, and there I meet three Swedish guys talking loudly.
His friends start pulling away their buddy who is completely lost in his Karate Kid imitations. I arrive at a park with two neon-lit artworks, and where two Swedish middle-aged men sit on a bench and smoke. Finally, with regards to Asian immigrants who interact with other non-white immigrants in the minority dominated Swedish suburbs, there are only a few texts to account for. After having accounted for the arguably most common themes that occur in the non-white Swedish literature when Asians turn up as characters, it is now time to try to discuss and answer why Asians are so relatively absent within minority Sweden and by extension in Swedish society at large.
Is it possible to talk about Swedish Asians as a model minority according to the American understanding of the position of Asians within the US? To begin with, as much as it appears that African Americans and Latin Americans in the US can harbor Orientalist images about Asians, which include various gendered stereotypes of Asian men and Asian women and which are similar to the ones that also exist among white Americans, this is also true for minorities in Sweden although in a different and Swedish way.
Concerning the works written by non-Asian minority authors and the texts that Swedish Asian authors themselves are behind, it is striking when comparing these two selections of texts, both with regard to Asian children, Asian women and Asian men, as they speak clearly to each other. Asian children are often perceived as being adopted children to white Swedes, while Asian women are often portrayed as being married to white men, unlike Asian men who tend to be accounted for as being single and not always as being heterosexual.
Even in the contempory Swedish public sphere, there are only a few Swedish Asians who are visible within a certain sector, such as within the cultural sphere, the media or the academic sphere. Also, in other cultural contexts besides literature and media, Swedish Asians are relatively invisible compared to other minorities, such as in feature films, in popular music or on stage, as there are hardly any Swedish Asian actors, singers, musicians, artists or stand-up comedians except for a handful of names.
Likewise, there is also a strong tendency to look down upon Asian women who are with white men and Asian men who do not seem to be able to live up to the masculinity ideals, neither among minority men nor among majority men in the examined texts and titles.
This proximity to Swedish whiteness factor, which in practice is about family formations and intimate relations to white Swedes, probably means that Asians appear to be more integrated than all other minority groups. However, proximity to white Swedes is not always regarded as something positive by other minorities and can be seen as something negative, which probably explains why adopted Asians are often portrayed as pitiable non-whites who are lacking racial pride and any racial solidarity with other visible minorities and explains why Asian women who are together with white men are sometimes represented as something like sellouts who turn their back on minority Sweden.
Other significant countries of origin were Iran, Afghanistan, and Thailand. Loading statistic Show source. Download for free You need to log in to download this statistic Register for free Already a member?
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