Asian American Studies Now: A Critical Reader

Introduction

Introduction Ten years have passed since Jean Wu and Min Song edited Asian American Studies: A Reader, inspired by the idea that an interdisciplinary collection of foundational writings about Asian America would make course preparation easier for teachers of introductory level Asian American Studies courses.1 Since then, Min Song has advanced from senior level graduate student to tenured professor of English at Boston College, and Jean Wu continues to teach at Tufts University, where she develops and teaches comparative race and Asian American Studies courses that involve students in racial and social justice projects in Asian American communities. The Wu and Song Reader brought together essential readings in the field, and we believe that it remains an excellent resource for students and teachers of Asian America. All the same, in view of the flood of outstanding new scholarship on Asian America in the years since 2000, we have come to the conclusion that the time is right for supplementation. A new generation of scholars is responsible for much of the latest work in the field, and they are researching new topics, bringing new theoretical approaches to bear on familiar themes, and pushing the field in bold new directions. These recent developments have coincided with worldwide shifts that make the present moment very different from that at the end of the last century, when the first anthology was produced. We sense an emerging need to define the current shape of this rapidly changing field, one that has only recently established itself as a vibrant, mature, and thriving scholarly enterprise. Asian American Studies Now: A Critical Reader attempts to meet this need by providing an updated introduction to Asian American Studies. It collects seminal articles and groundbreaking texts along with exciting new scholarship. We hope that it will be used as both a companion to the earlier anthology and a stand-alone introduction to the field. Two major goals have governed our efforts in producing this new reader. First, we intend our anthology to be used as a primer and teacher’s guide in introductory Asian American Studies classrooms and beyond. Students and teachers at the undergraduate, graduate, and secondary levels will find its contents useful both as a curriculum outline and as a resource for readings on Asian American history, culture, politics, and social issues. In the latter instance, it can even be excerpted for a wide range of classroom situations. And the reader will also provide a general audience with an introduction to the field’s core issues and themes. We have selected essays for the significance of their contribution to the field, but also for their clarity, their brevity, and—just as important—their accessibility to readers with little or no prior knowledge of Asian American Studies. Second, we thought we should use the compiling of a new anthology as an occasion to pause and reflect on the state of the field and to think about its future, particularly its pedagogical dimensions now that it is established as an interdisciplinary field with a significant presence in colleges and universities across the United States and a growing presence internationally. We likewise wanted to reflect on the relationship between Asian American Studies and ongoing social justice initiatives.2 In doing so, we tried not only to consider the field’s past and present but also to look toward its future. Asian American Studies was initiated together with ethnic studies as part of the movements for social justice of the 1960s and 1970s. From the outset Asian American Studies included a commitment to working with and serving Asian American communities in their struggle for a more just and equitable present and future.3 Since its foundation, the field has undergone significant transformation, reconfiguration, expansion, and crisis. Still, many academics engaged in Asian American Studies continue to pay homage to the field’s origin in a context of social change, and they point to the way their work fits within that tradition. Given the manifestly political nature of Asian American Studies from its very establishment as a scholarly endeavor, we have often found ourselves wondering aloud, “What impact has the field had on the world? How has the field contributed to fundamental social change?” We usually tell ourselves that, surely, decades of dialogue, research, and teaching in Asian American Studies have helped in some ways to promote social justice, to establish Asian America as an integral and vital part of our world, and to improve...