Colonial Discourse and the Writings of Katherine Mayo

Abstract

This article examines the writings of Katherine Mayo (1867–1940), an influential writer and journalist on international issues in the 1920s and ′30s, and locates them within the genre of “colonial discourse.” The authors begin with a chronological overview of her writing on Dutch Guiana, the United States and Europe and then scrutinize in greater detail her work on the Philippines and India. It is suggested that using culturally and racially essentialist tropes, Mayo painted a culturally and politically regressive picture of colonial “others” while simultaneously reifying the Anglo-Saxon “self.” In doing so, she functioned not as the objective reporter she claimed to be but as an active supporter of continued United States and British colonial rule in different parts of the world and an opponent of the immigration of Asians, namely Indians and Filipinos, to the United States.