Editor's Preface

The publication of this issue of JAAS marks an important milestone for the journal. After an extended period of backlogs, JAAS 8.3 has returned us to our proper production schedule. Far more people deserve my thanks for their help in this endeavor than my memory can accommodate, but I must mention at least a few of them. First, Professors Dana Takagi and Franklin Ng, immediate past and current presidents of the Association for Asian American Studies, respectively, took no small risk in entrusting me with the job of editing our field's flagship journal. Second, both Mary Muhler, Journals Production Coordinator at Johns Hopkins University Press, and her predecessor, Lynn Logan, demonstrated great patience and offered the benefit of their considerable skills at every step. Bill Breichner, JHUP Journals Publisher, encouraged and inspired my work through his unwavering faith in the journal's value. All of the production staff at Johns Hopkins, most of whom I don't know by name, displayed remarkable energy in publishing seven issues of JAAS in a single year, despite the burden of trying to decipher my sometimes cryptic editorial notes. Both past and present members of the journal's editorial board supported the undertaking with the strength of their advice and work as peer-reviewers. Authors and referees alike graciously accepted my unreasonable deadlines and came through with an impressive level of consistency. Professor Min Hyoung Song and his predecessor, Professor Kandice Chuh, managed the Reviews Editor's position with invaluable expertise while helping me deal with multiple crises at the same time. Finally, and most importantly, both individual and institutional subscribers continued to reserve space on their shelves and in their budgets with nothing more than my word that the journal would be made current. To all of these many benefactors, I offer my deepest gratitude and my pledge that we will focus equal energy toward addressing the problem of submissions backlogs that continues to subject our evaluation process to inordinate delays.

The articles offered in this issue of JAAS reflect its significance as a marker of progress in a singularly fitting manner. When my first published work appeared in 1986 ("Forbidden Families: Immigration Experiences of Chinese Women Under the Page Law, 1875–1882," Journal of American Ethnic History 6:1 (Fall 1986): 28–46.), research in Asian American Studies was still bound to the paradigms of citizenship and the nation-state. Those of us writing in the field were so busy giving voice to silenced stories that we found little time to construct alternative theoretical models. Then, in the 1990s a new generation of scholars brought transnational perspectives to bear on both old and new histories. Their work inspired a much-needed global awareness that has enriched and expanded our understanding of Asian communities around the world and their multiple interconnections. However, as Evelyn Hu-DeHart notes with characteristic insight in her closing commentary on these four articles, the first wave of transnational scholarship often obscured and ignored the realities of nation-state influence in ways that undermined its otherwise groundbreaking significance. As both protégés and representatives of the transnational movement, Catherine Ceniza Choy, Erika Lee, Naoko Shibusawa, and Ji-Yeon Yuh — in a subtle manner that Hu-DeHart clarifies more directly — initiate an invaluable synthesis of transnational and nation-state models that promises to direct the historical studies of Asian communities, regardless of location, for years to come.