Editor’s preface

As I write this preface on September 19, 2015, exactly two months have passed since Samuel DuBose, an unarmed Black man, was stopped in a routine traffic stop and shot to death by a police officer. DuBose’s murder hit home because the shooting occurred less than two miles from my house in Cincinnati. Since Ferguson and the murder of Michael Brown, so many names have become linked with police brutality. Sandra Bland. Freddie Gray. Tamir Rice. Tanisha Anderson. I could go on. The #BlackLivesMatter movement has provided an important counterpublic space to protest these forms of violence that occur again and again. I joined the BLM chapter in Cincinnati after Sam DuBose was murdered in my effort to try and find community and activist channels to speak out against racism. Now more than ever, Asian Americans need to be thinking about the value of life and how little of it is accorded to Black lives. How, as a field of scholars and activists, can we, not just serve as allies, but serve as important critical and activist voices in refusing the narratives that are imposed on Black Bodies?

Asian American studies as a field has maintained a strong commitment to thinking about its intellectual and activist obligations. While none of the articles in this issue directly address the topic of police brutality and the flagrant disregard for Black Lives, I can’t help but notice how they collectively urge us to think about how race remains a central vector of critical analysis in understanding how communities understand their place in the United States. Historical, literary, anthropological, political scientific, and sociological methodologies are among those that are included in this issue. With topics including novels about Chinese American labor on the Transcontinental Railroad, diasporic intimacies among Afro-Asian immigrants, analyses of immigrant religious practices in the Deep South, electoral politics, and finally the experiences of new immigrant groups from Bhutan and Myanmar, this issue provides a plethora of issues to contemplate. These are not analyses or stories of model minorities but rather deep engagements with racial injustice and interdisciplinary works that attest to the different forms of value that are simultaneously denied and strenuously fought for among Asian American communities.

This volume also celebrates the achievements of the best work in our field and includes write-ups of the AAAS book award winners from 2015. In keeping with tradition of honoring the work of our outgoing editorial staff, we are also proud to include book reviews of recently published work by Min Hyoung Song and Cynthia Wu.