Introduction: New Perspectives on the Studies of Asian American Folklores

Abstract

The ultimate goal of the differences between us and them is to achieve a harmony that preserves these differences.-Author's noteTHE PURPOSE OF THIS SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE Journal of Folklore (JAF) is to advocate, to the academic and public sectors, that (1) the commonly classified (by the US census) are to be recognized and acknowledged as diverse within and integral to the traditionally defined American groups; and (2) as such, their are rightfully to be studied as legitimate fields of scholarship; and, subsequently, (3) relevant methodologies are to be developed to facilitate the study of the of Asian groups. Despite the fast-growing population and wide-ranging impact of Asian in everyday life in the United States, efforts to acknowledge the rightful place of Asian within the field of are long overdue.The importance of recognizing Asian Americans as groups as legitimate as those traditionally defined in folkloristics compels the authors herein first to define who the are and what constitutes their in both a folkloristic context and an social context, and, second, to explore what methodologies are best suited to the study of their folklores. In the Asian and their we are reminded that, as the folklorist Elliott Oring points out: [Folk groups] do not exist until someone claims that they exist. . . . Ethnic like other can exist only after a claim has been made for their existence (1986:25). The concept of Asian Americans as lacks clarity; it is, therefore, valid to question the completeness and inclusiveness of their academic representations. This kind of questioning of the academic treatment of newly recognized has been done by John Roberts for African Americans as a (1993:158-9); by Flores, for Latinos (1997); by Clarke, for the Yoruba (2004); and by Rivera-Servera, through proposing the idea of productive frictions, for other diversities (2012). Clearly, any discussion of the 'American community' must be inclusive (Flores 1997:184) of not only the Euro-American, the African American, and the Latino, but also the Asian communities. In fact, the authors in this volume believe that Asian have already defined who they are by their practices, as reflected in literary (Hagedorn 1993, 2004) and ethnic studies (Takaki 1987, 1993). One task in this volume is to further the effort of defining through (Dundes 1983), considering it as a paradigm shift (in Thomas Kuhn's sense) along the notion of folkloric identity (more discussion in the section called Challenges in this Introduction, and in Juwen Zhang's article in this issue of JAF). What we see as the marginalizing of Asian Americans and their is inseparable from the marginalizing of the many important and long-term contributions Asian Americans have made in areas of society.We realize that there are two problems in using terms like and folklore: (1) the terms ignore the diversity among various Asian and the diversity within each Asian group, and (2) the terms reinforce stereotypes like all Asian (or Chinese) Americans are the same in doing such and such. Thus we currently are forced to use such terms as folklores, folklore, groups, or folklores of Asian groups in various contexts-until better, more appropriate terms have been coined. Here, we rely on Alan Dundes's definition of folk being any of people whatsoever who share at least one common factor (1965:2; emphasis in original), Noyes's notion that a group has common practices (1995:449), and Ben-Amos's statement that folklore is artistic communication in small groups (1972:12). …