Introduction and Preface viiAmerican’ from ‘Asian,’ ” explains Elaine H. Kim,
“was a way to conjure up and inscribe our faces
on the blank pages and screens of America’s hege-
monic culture” (Foreword xii).
In the 1970s and 1980s critics did not agree
on the precise definition of Asian America, but
nearly all of them focused on Americans of East
Asian descent. In 1972, for example, when Kai-yu
Hsu and Helen Palubinskas published a literary
anthology titled Asian American Authors, the edi-
tors included, with a few exceptions, American-
born authors of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino
origin. Two years later, when Frank Chin, Jeffery
Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong
edited Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American
Writers, they included only the works that they
judged to show “authentic” Asian-American sen-
sibilities free from “white supremacist” ideology
(qtd. in Ling 30). When Elaine H. Kim published
Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the
Writings and Their Social Context (1982), a semi-
nal work in the field, she defined Asian-American
literature as “published creative writing in English
by Americans of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and
Filipino descent” and limited herself to discussing
works that deal with the American experience of
Asian Americans (xi).
The definition and boundaries of Asian Amer-
ica continued to change in the following years.
While early scholars focused on authors with cul-
tural ties to East Asia and on works that deal with
American domestic issues, subsequent scholars
began to expand the field to include immigrant
authors and works that portray not just the United
States but also their countries of origin, imagined
or otherwise. Whereas early scholars and activists
tried to claim America at the expense of severing
ties with the ancestral cultures of Asia, later schol-
ars attempted to empower themselves by reclaim-
ing their ancestral cultures and embracing them.
The expansion of the field, in a sense, was close-
ly tied to the changing global economic landscape.
The economic strengths of China, South Korea,
Taiwan, Singapore, and, of course, Japan had
undoubtedly contributed to an improved image
of Asian Americans in recent decades. Moreover,
transportation between the United States and
Asia became no longer a long, daunting jour-
ney but now a matter of hours and much more
affordable. Immigration patterns also changed,
as students, middle-class and affluent families,
and professionals began flowing in and out of the
country, changing the makeup of Asian America.
In addition, the emergence of multinational cor-
porations and such technological advancements
as the Internet and satellite broadcasting had
significantly shortened the distance between Asia
and America.
The growing permeability in the boundaries
between Asia and Asian America, however, cre-
ated an anxiety within the Asian-American com-
munity. For example, Sau-ling Cynthia Wong, a
prominent scholar, voiced caution in her 1995
essay, “Denationalization Reconsidered: Asian
American Cultural Criticism at a Theoretical
Crossroads.” Wong poignantly argued that Asian
America should remain distinct from diasporic
Asia because, among other things, “collapsing the
two will work to the detriment more of Asian
Americans as a minority within U.S. borders than
of ‘Asian Asians’ ”:In fact, in the age of Newt Gingrich, Rush
Limbaugh, Proposition 187, and increasingly
vicious attacks on affirmative action and other
policies safeguarding the rights of peoples of
color, there seems to me to be an even greater
need for Asian Americanists to situate them-
selves historically. (20)In practical terms, Wong’s point was valid. After
all, despite all the efforts made by many activ-
ists from the late 1960s, even a fifth-generation
Asian American is likely to hear, “Where are you
really from?” or “You speak English very well.”
Most scholars agree, however, that Asian-Ameri-
can identities are determined not solely by the
American history of immigration, exclusion laws,
racial discrimination, and internment but also
by the ever-changing paradigm of international