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| ix Acknowledgments I originally undertook this project in order to explore an omission. My Chinese American parents were raised in Arkansas during the Jim Crow era. How they negotiated the color line—not being invited into their white classmates’ homes, not attending high school dances, for example—is not something they often talk about, nor is it a history readily conceivable in this now purportedly post-racial moment. I tried to explain this prohibition of intimacy to a Midwesterner who questioned, “Your mother couldn’t go to her high school dances?” in tones that conveyed incredulity. “Couldn’t” conjures up the image of Elizabeth Eckford forcibly turned away from Little Rock Central High, a racist mob behind her. “I don’t mean that if she had shown up the National Guard would have been called out,” I countered, feeling the enormity of filling a historical void. To complicate matters, my mother remembers her absence differently: she chose not to attend. In what follows, I place perhaps undue significance on mere subtleties, those moments in segregation-era culture that can be read in a dual register . From the half-told stories of my parents, the ones that do not make an appearance in the iconography of American race relations, I began an exploration into, in part, what it means to survive within a (partially) hostile culture with dignity intact. This book is thus dedicated to Willie and Sue Mae Bow, whose example infuses the pages of this book and whose presence personalized its writing. I thank Nancy Low, Steven Bow, Lori Carson, and Melissa Deponte for sharing this legacy with me. I am exceedingly fortunate to have been assisted in this project by colleagues in multiple academic communities—Asian American Studies, New Southern Studies, Whiteness Studies, and American literature. I am indebted to Anne Anlin Cheng, Daniel Y. Kim, and David Roediger for their encouraging and productive feedback on this manuscript. Their acute commentary and attention have substantially enriched this work. x | Acknowledgments I am especially grateful for the support of Elena Tajima Creef, Malini Schueller, and Victor Jew, who helped see this project through at crucial moments. Their expertise and critical reading over the long haul were key to my own continued faith. Victor Bascara, Shilpa Davé, Lisa Nakamura, Grace Hong, and Michael Peterson were enormously generous in reading the earliest fragments of what would become this book; their own writing continues to inspire me. Numerous colleagues enlarged my thinking along the way or offered strategic support, advice, and encouragement: Cindy I-Fen Cheng, Jigna Desai, Susan Stanford Friedman, Khyati Y. Joshi, John Jung, Josephine Lee, Stacey Lee, Carolyn Levine, Brian Locke, the late Nellie McKay, Jan Miyasaki, Gary Okihiro, Jeff Steele, and Morris Young. Thanks go to Jennifer Ho, Bobby Moon, Junaid Rana, and Steve Kantowitz for references they shared with me, and to Miranda Outman-Kramer and Karen Alexander for their sharp editorial eyes. I would like to acknowledge Jessica Peña, Nmachi Nwokeabia, Lisa Bu, and Atsushi Tajima for providing much needed research support. My writing has deepened with the feedback of diverse audiences. I am especially indebted to Kent Ono, Tina Chen, Cindy Wu, Jon Smith, Katherine Henninger, Lauren Rabinovitz, and Yoonmee Chang for sharing their ideas and communities with me. I would also like to acknowledge the generosity of Marlo Poras, Louise Gee, Thomas Gregersen, Judy Yung, and Mai Nguyen. This book has come together under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Max Orovitz Research Awards, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and the Vice Provost’s Office, the College of Arts and Sciences, English Department, and Asian American Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin. Special thanks go to Lynet Uttal, Hemant Shah, Phil Certain, Steve J. Stern, Michael Bernard-Donals, and Tom Schaub for their support of this work. I am grateful for the editorial expertise of Bret Lott, the Southern Review; Tony Peffer, Journal of Asian American Studies; Gordon Hutner, American Literary History; and Mary Hawkesworth, Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society. I thank these editors and journals for permission to reprint previously published text that appears here in revised form. Eric Zinner and Ciara McLaughlin at NYU Press are extraordinary editors noteworthy for their professionalism and expertise; they deserve the credit for shepherding this work into being. Finally, my greatest appreciation goes to Russ, Julian, and Maya, who have been enormously energizing, entertaining, and unfailingly present. They continue to make the often lonely vocation of...

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