Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier

This book argues that the invention of Asian American identities serves as an index to the historical formation of modern America. By tracing constructions of Asian American to an interpenetrating dynamic between Asia and America, the author obtains a deeper understanding of key issues in American culture, history, and society. The formation of America in the twentieth century has had everything to do with westward expansion across the Pacific frontier and the movement of Asians onto American soil. After the passage of the last piece of anti-Asian legislation in the 1930 s, the United States found it had to grapple with both the presence of Asians already in America and the imperative to develop its neocolonial interests in East Asia. The author argues that, under these double imperatives, a great wall between Asian and American is constructed precisely when the two threatened to merge. Yet the very incompleteness of American identity has allowed specific and contingent fusion of Asian and American at particular historical junctures.