Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi

Preface

ix Preface  In 1992 I fell in love with Asian American history in the dimly lit stacks of the Barnard College library. I was just beginning research on my senior thesis project, and I followed the call numbers to the small collection of Asian American studies books where the grandfathers of the field lined up shoulder to shoulder. Ronald Takaki, Frank Chin, and later Mary Paik Lee drew me in by their fiery tales of struggle, resistance, and self-determination . The first Asian American studies course was yet to be offered at Columbia University, and I devoured every last book the library owned. While I had always known that Asian American history existed—when I was a child, Santa left me books about Japanese American internment camps during the holidays—the writings of these historians in the library stacks affected me differently. They inspired and prodded me. They made me feel less sheepish about being an Asian American, much more so than the KTVU public service announcements that had streamed onto my television set during the early 1980s declaring, “I am proud to be a Japanese American.” At Barnard, Professors Richard Lufrano and Judith Weisenfeld guided and nurtured the historian in me. My first lessons in academia and people of color consciousness, two terms that were not yet in my vocabulary, came from them. Professor Lufrano warned me that if I were to become a historian, not everyone was going to like my work. Professor Weisenfeld without ever saying a word gave me a glimpse of the loneliness I might face as a faculty member of color personally and professionally committed to issues of race. I distinctly remember the morning after the Rodney King verdict in April 1992 when the court system failed the African American King by acquitting the white police officers who brutally beat him. As the x Preface neighborhoods of South Central and Koreatown in Los Angeles burned in violent outrage, a very small protest formed on the lawn in front of the library. Professor Weisenfeld and only two other faculty members quietly walked in a circle with signs. Professor Weisenfeld additionally assisted me through the graduate school application process and encouraged my interest in Asian American history. Though she was already a scholar of achievement early in her career, she generously reassured me, “You have a much better application than I did when I applied to Ph.D. programs.” I am most grateful that Professors Lufrano and Weisenfeld both tolerated mounds of my mediocre work as I struggled to adjust to the demands of a college curriculum. Their grace in sifting through my dangling participles , vague arguments, and requests for deadline extensions allowed me to imagine becoming a historian of race. When I arrived at UCLA to begin my graduate program, Professors Janice Reiff and Laura Edwards stood as unfailing pillars of support during various moments when my failing out of the program seemed inevitable . Other faculty members’ seemingly small acts aided me immensely. Valerie Matsumoto passed on several copy cards to me so that I could subsist solely on a teaching assistant’s salary while making countless copies in the microfilm room. Encouraging words and passing salutations from Min Zhou and Miriam Silverberg made me feel special at a large university where graduate students often felt abandoned at sea. Michael Salman and Muriel McClendon regularly invited me and my partner at the time into their home for gourmet meals and important conversations. Shela Patel and Barbara Bernstein quickly and painlessly solved bureaucratic conundrums , allowing me to worry only about my dissertation. Most important, students I met while at UCLA gave me sustenance to continue on the path from which I saw many fall away. Allison Varzally patiently listened to my rants and provided warm companionship and sanity. Stacey Hirose gave me courage and support to pass the comprehensive exam that I had failed the first time around. Cathy Irwin, John Bowes, Daniel Hurewitz, Laura Kim Lee, Dan Lee, and Cindy Cumfer indulged me in conversations about literature, Western history, sexuality, and Asian America. I am grateful to the 1998 Master’s cohort in Asian American studies, particularly Leslie Ito and Steve Wong, who generously took me in by inviting me to their parties during my first two years at UCLA. Among them were the very first people to whom I came out as “not straight.” They accepted xi Preface me in a manner...