Editor's Preface
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Whether through colonialism abroad or through domestic efforts to assimilate immigrants and members of displaced groups, the United States shares with other western powers an ongoing legacy of cultural chauvinism and exploitation. A fundamental element of this behavioral pattern has been the imposition of expected norms of submissive reinforcement, albeit couched in the language of democratic and humanitarian ideals, upon subject and minority peoples. Paralleling such oppressive tactics, however, are recurrent stories of co-optive agency, in which the subaltern reshapes imposed expectations according to their own values and aspirations. Although shut off from the avenues of equality, they achieve at least a measure of internal autonomy and encourage future generations toward even greater self-realization. Even when falling outside the more "heroic" parameters of political and legal activism, these expressions of independence offer considerable illumination to the study of cultural dynamics in a global environment characterized far too often by chronic inequality.
The articles offered in this issue of JAAS explore, through varied perspectives, expressions of subaltern agency. Eric Estuar Reyes offers a reading of R. Zamora Linmark's Rolling the R's that recasts the novel in terms of Filipino/a resistance to the hierarchical structures of American developmentalism in Hawai'i. George Uba examines the preponderance of Asian American participants in ballroom dancing, in counterbalance [End Page vii] to their limited presence on the popular television show, Dancing with the Stars, and the ways in which these "real world" dancers transform an assumed elitist activity into an expression of transnational egalitarianism. Michelle Black Wester challenges a western-focused interpretation of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's novel, Dictee, by exploring the Korea-centered elements of its structure and, in so doing, recapturing its gendered energy. Through their efforts, Reyes, Uba, and Wester present an unusually rich study of resilient self-definition within the Asian American context.
