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Acknowledgments To all whose paths I have been lucky enough to cross: Thank you for teaching me how to gratefully embrace the sweetness of living and gracefully endure the challenges of life. All of you have been the strong anchors that lovingly and firmly hold my universe in its place. Writing a scholarly book for over a decade must be a testament of one’s love of knowledge and the arduous and fascinating process that goes along with it. I have been blessed with and am grateful for so many amazing souls whose love and commitment have also gone into the writing of this book. Claire Moses has, throughout more than a decade, provided me with constant and miraculous support in the making and remaking not only of this book but also of myself as a scholar, teacher, and person. I thank her for every victory, small and big, that I have been able to achieve, with her help of course, in my life. I owe many thanks to the editors and anonymous reviewers at the University of Hawai‘i Press for providing me with tremendously helpful feedback. This book is stronger because of them. I am grateful for Wendy Bolton’s meticulous editing. Pamela Kelley has been an amazing editor to work with. She has made this process such an easy and wonderful one. ProfessorsandlifelongfriendsattheUniversityofMarylandhaveunfailingly come to my rescue each time this book (or I) fell apart and needed restructuring . Seung-kyung Kim has been a firm and loving mentor; Debby Rosenfelt, Elsa Barkley Brown, Shawn Parry-Giles, Bonnie Thornton Dill, Lynn Bolles, Katie King, and Ruth Zambrana have all provided encouraging and inspiring space for me to grow intellectually, personally, and professionally. Annie Carter, Cliff Howard, and Laura Nichols have been there for me above and beyond their tremendous administrative help. Heather Rellihan, JV Sapinoso, Kim Willliams, Laura Logie, Robyn Epstein, and Gwyn Weathers have been such true, kind, and loving friends with whom I have enjoyed many stimulating conversations and some silly fun times. My thanks goes to each and every one of them. Colleagues at Emory University provided me with a welcoming and intellectually stimulating home during my postdoc year there. Carla Freeman is a brilliant and encouraging scholar whose questions have made me rethink how I x : Acknowledgments framed this book. Lynne Huffer, Pam Scully, Holloway Sparks, Rosemarie Garland -Thomson, and Esther Jones have all been wonderfully generous with their time and thought-provoking ideas. Berky Abreu and Linda Calloway tirelessly and patiently handled all administrative tasks. I thank them dearly. It is to my colleagues at the University of Kansas whom I owe my learning to lead a balanced life: being productive while enjoying what life has to offer. Tanya Golash-Boza is an inspiring colleague whose solution-oriented approach to everything in life never allowed me a moment of unproductivity. Even when relaxing, I am “productive” in doing nothing! Incredibly loving and stimulating friendshipswithMariyaOmelicheva,ChristinaLux,TamiAlbin,SherrieTucker, Elif Andac, Randal Jelks, Stephanie Fitzgerald, Jessica Vasquez, Yajaira Padilla, Holly Thompson-Goerdel, Jorge Pérez, and Ben Chapell have all nurtured my development as a “soulful” scholar and person. My colleagues at the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at KU—Akiko Takeyama, Hannah Britton,AnnSchofield,TanyaHart,MarthaVicente,OmofolaboAjayi-Soyinka, John Younger, and Charlene Moehlenhard—have always been encouraging and nurturing every step of the way. Jan Emerson was very helpful with the incredible amount of administrative work I seemed to always have. The New Faculty General Research Fund, General Research Fund, and International Travel Research Grant of the University of Kansas have helped fund the research for this book. The Mary Savage Snouffer dissertation fellowship of the University of Maryland also contributed to the early writing of this book. My colleagues in the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Hawai‘i—Mire Koikari, Kathy Ferguson, Meda Chesney-Lind, Susan Hippensteele , Aya Kimura, and Monisha Das Gupta—have all shared with me their brilliance, grace, encouragement, and positive energy. The magnitude of my gratitude for being able to work with them in this beautiful island simply goes beyond my ability to express it. I thank them for inviting me to be a part of their strong and vibrant department. Being here still often feels like a dream. I thoroughly enjoy taking intellectual delight in this poetic space of Hawai‘i. Norine Young and Elliott Curelop have been wonderfully helpful with the administrative paperwork related to this book. Throughout the years, I have...

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