Editor's Preface

The task of attempting to measure empire-building's negative impact on native peoples, and discrimination's on diasporic communities, continues to challenge the analytical abilities of scholars across numerous disciplines. Such endeavors tax the capabilities of existing anthropological, literary, and sociological models, for example, thereby inspiring both extensive empirical research and the revision of theoretical constructs. Indeed, much of this story defies easily-assembled measures, since it emanates from the individual and collective psyches of its principle characters. Thus, even more so than in the past, meaningful study of the ethnic experience depends upon both disciplinary expertise and interdisciplinary collaboration.

The articles in this issue of JAAS reflect such multidimensional demands upon contemporary scholarship in Asian American Studies. Soo Ah Kwon builds upon the techniques of the anthropological field study to explore the cultural significance of the import car "scene," a phenomenon created by Asian American youth, by interpreting its series of automotive customizing shows and street races as a process of identity-formation. Debra Werrlein employs the tools of literary criticism to analyze colonialism's influence upon the manner in which an "insider" author develops her characters. Philip Yang utilizes classic sociological techniques in his generational examination of academic achievement among Asian Americans but foregrounds gender in a manner that complicates old notions of immigrant aspirations and the meaning of assimilation. Through such creative enterprise, Kwon, Werrlein, and Yang illustrate the future—and present—of Asian American Studies.