Editor's Preface

The dynamics of relationships between dominant and subordinate groups in human societies have long occupied the work of specialists in Ethnic and Gender Studies. Beneath struggles for equality and acceptance—and often undermining these more overt endeavors—subtle elements of cultural coding and labeling influence the interactions between members of empowered and powerless groups. For those seeking to carve out lives for themselves amid the immediate realities of inequality, internalized stereotypes of themselves and others both inform strategies for upward mobility and enforce limitations, sometimes self-imposed, on visions for the future. For those seeking to retain positions of privilege, equally powerful stereotypes—perhaps even the same ones merely recast in their favor—reinforce barriers of separation and inculcate the superior/inferior dichotomy as part of the educational development of subsequent generations.

The articles offered in this issue of JAAS address such social/psychological dynamics in varied ways. John Stephens and Sung-Ae Lee examine the ways that picture books published for children have transferred cultural coding to Korean American readers yet have lost and/or replaced these markers of identity in the translation of Korean books into English. Kumiko Nemoto explores the influence of cultural coding on Asian American women who seek out romantic relationships with White men as well as the effect of stereotypical expectations on efforts to sustain these relationships over time. Finally, Jessica Meyers addresses the cultural meaning of a Vietnamese American space—Eden Center, a shopping and business complex in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area—as both a source of empowerment for members of the first generation and a symbol of separation for their children and grandchildren. Together, these three presentations do much to further our understanding of the Asian American experience in particular and, more broadly, of inequality and its impact on the everyday lives of people.