Asian Exceptions, Racial Illegibility, Relational Spaces: A Dialogue on Asian Canadian, Asian American, and US Southern Studies

Abstract

The essays that follow argue for the adoption of more expansive and multifaceted approaches to understanding Asian diasporic relations within Canada and the US and between the “souths” of both nations. Lai resists hegemonic formulations that force comparisons between state powers and also assessments of the perceived “belatedness” of Asian Canadian Studies; to expand our understanding of Asian Canadian expression and relations, she argues for greater attention to non-academic cultural productions as well as interstitial histories. Lee expands definitions of racial in-betweenness to look at geopolitical formulations including nationalism and settler colonialism; he argues that the discomforting affects stimulated by these historical movements should also be included in analysis of transpacific migrations. Kim, examining Season One of Serial (2014), a documentary podcast series by This American Life, highlights the instability of racial categories, unevenness of racial identification and dis-identification among individuals, and cultural effects of a racial analytics that frequently “locate[s] Asians outside of the North American everyday.” Bow, noting a bias within Asian American Studies to favor post-1965 decolonization and migration narratives over a much earlier hemispheric history of indentured Asian laborers, draws attention to the functions of US immigration laws and nativist sentiments in authorizing state management racial categories “Asian” at different times and for different purposes. Cha demonstrates the pedagogical opportunities contemporary works such as Monique Truong’s novel Bitter in the Mouth (2010) open up through their rejection of traditional formulations of regional and ethnic literature and provision of a more “syncretic vision” of the US South. Ho, in the final essay, highlights the many productive discrepancies brought to light by the question “Where are you from?”, which for her summons the many global, local, hemispheric, regional, migratory, and diasporic interstitial crossings of her family.