Asian Australia and Asian America: Making Transnational Connections

Abstract

As this special issue of Amerasia Journal is being finalized, President Obama's office is still planning his first official visit to Australia and Indonesia, after two previously postponed trips. The planned visit to Jakarta has been portrayed as a homecoming of sorts for the President, who spent four years in the world's largest Muslim country as a boy when his mother married an Indonesian man, Lolo Soetoro. The young Barry Soetoro, as he was then called, did not have the typical expatriate experience but rather lived among local children and attended a state-funded primary school. This perception of his cultural affiliation with Indonesia/ns and his openness to cross-cultural dialogue as the result of his multiracial and multicultural heritage contributed to Obama's transnational appeal, as indicated by his popularity in the Asian media in the lead up to his historic election. According to his former primary school classmate and now Indonesian Member of Parliament, Dewi Asmara Oetojo, Obama can be a br...