Editor's Preface

According to its mission statement, JAAS "seeks to define Asian American studies as a distinct, interdisciplinary scholarly pursuit and to integrate Asian American perspectives into the various disciplines that contribute to the development of the field." The editors, in drafting that statement, were well aware that Asian American studies has developed well beyond the bounds of its initial formulation and in directions unforeseen at the field's conception. We were also cognizant of the fact that Asian Americanists brought diverse training and orientations to their research. Hence, our primary purposes are to present the latest intellectual developments and multidisciplinary perspectives that make our field so dynamic and to promote active dialogue among Asian Americanists and others.

If JAAS is to achieve those noteworthy goals, it will require the active participation of Asian Americanists and interested others to contribute, review, solicit, and serve as future editors and editorial board members, together with a sustained engagement as a member of the Association for Asian American Studies. Please feel free to consult with the co-editors, with the members of the editorial board, and with the officers of the Association about JAAS and its contents. Your involvement will contribute to the further development of the field and to resist contemporary assaults on racialized minorities, women, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, immigrants, the poor, and so forth. Lofty goals, but our heady past and collective actions have shown that we can indeed accomplish more than we might have ever imagined.

—John Liu and Gary Okihiro, "Editors' Introduction," JAAS 1, no. 1 (1997).

Twenty years ago, John Liu and Gary Okihiro, the founding co-editors of JAAS, which they remind readers is pronounced "jazz," wrote the above in the inaugural issue of the journal. JAAS, then, was the primary intellectual venue in which scholars, artists, and activists could publish their current research. The field has grown in leaps and bounds over the past twenty years, and there are now several other exciting venues in which scholars can publish. As the official publication of the AAAS, JAAS has remained, in large measure, true to the original vision of the founding editors. The articles that we have published in the last three years have pushed the field in new directions. I had one goal coming in as editor and that was to see if it would be possible for all of you to eagerly anticipate the arrival of JAAS in your mailboxes or to submit your work. Judging from anecdotal conversations and the dozens of emails we have received, so many more of you are reading JAAS and are eager to see your work appear in the pages of our journal.

This issue remains committed to the goals of publishing the highest quality interdisciplinary work and includes cutting-edge research in performance studies, history, literature, and queer studies. Yu Jung Lee writes about the U.S. debut of the Kim Sisters between 1959 and 1967. She reads their performances as emblematic of both American Cold War integration and anxiety toward Korea and Koreans, and examines the processes that permitted the entry of Korean bodies into the American public sphere. Chris A. Eng focuses his article on a reading of Karen Tei Yamashita's I Hotel. He argues that familial logics of (inter)generationality undergird narratives about the origins and development of Asian American studies in ways that posit the "community" and the "academy" as competing formations within a generational conflict between a radical past and an institutionalized present. As a counterpoint to such accounts, he examines Yamashita's I Hotel (2010) to chart a queer genealogy of (be)longing that brings to bear relations, affinities, and contingencies that exceed a generational model of the history of the field. Emily Raymundo tackles another stalwart within Asian American literature but turns to one of his lesser examined novels. In her article, Raymundo reads Changrae Lee's Aloft (2004) for what it reveals about how literature is used by neoliberal multiculturalism to recruit subjects into its rationale, highlighting the problems that multiculturalism generates for Asian American studies scholars. Finally, Anna Pegler-Gordon focuses our attention on the history of internment...