Muyun Zhou

This project examines the grassroots literature and art created by Chinese diasporic communities in South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan during the Cold War. It demonstrates how these communities forged cultural networks across shifting national boundaries and political divisions, presenting alternative political alignments that diverged from Cold War international blocs. Connecting the Free World aligned, postcolonial locations where lingering forms of colonial racism coexisted with the Red Scare, this project argues that Chinese diasporic communities negotiating local interethnic dynamics alongside nation-state interests sought to overcome the Cold War divisions by drawing from artistic debates and transforming politics into aesthetic ideas.