“Chinese Brides” and Diasporic Visions

Abstract This short paper takes as its starting point a photograph titled Chinese Brides. It is an image orphaned by the archive, stored on its own in a folder within the Liverpool Evening Express newspaper photographic archive in the Liverpool Record Office, a local city and county archive in the northwest of England. In response to limited information about the subjects in the photograph, the author proposes a methodology of “diasporic vision” as a situated, experimental and multiple reading, drawing on album-making, speculative writing, and visual tracing. The resulting visions challenge conceptualizations of Chinese diasporic communities and identities, calling attention to their local specificities and historical contexts.