Asian American Studies Research Articles

Citizenship as Privilege and Social Identity: Implications for Psychological Distress.

Citizenship is both a system of privilege and a source of social identity. This study examines whether there are disparities in psychological distress between citizens and noncitizens, and whether these disparities may be explained by markers of social disadvantage (e.g., poverty, discrimination) or perceptions of success in the United States (i.e., subjective social status). We analyze data from the Asian subsample (n = 2,095) of the National Latino and Asian American Study. The data show that noncitizens report greater psychological distress compared with naturalized citizens and native-born citizens after accounting for sociodemographics (e.g., age, gender, Asian subgroup), socioeconomic characteristics (education, employment, income-to-poverty ratio), immigration (e.g., interview language, years in the United States, acculturative stress), health care visits, and everyday discrimination. Preliminary evidence suggests that subjective social status may explain some of the disparities between naturalized citizen and noncitizen Asian Americans.

Guest Editors' Introduction

Guest Editors' Introduction

What’s Eating Asian American Studies?: Authenticity, Ethnicity, and Cuisine

What’s Eating Asian American Studies?: Authenticity, Ethnicity, and Cuisine

Subjective Social Status and Self-Reported Health Among US-born and Immigrant Latinos.

Subjective social status is associated with a range of health outcomes. Few studies have tested the relevance of subjective social status among Latinos in the U.S.; those that have yielded mixed results. Data come from the Latino subsample of the 2003 National Latino and Asian American Study (N=2554). Regression models adjusted for socioeconomic and demographic factors. Stratified analyses tested whether nativity status modifies the effect of subjective social status on health. Subjective social status was associated with better health. Income and education mattered more for health than subjective social status among U.S.-born Latinos. However, the picture was mixed among immigrant Latinos, with subjective social status more strongly predictive than income but less so than education. Subjective social status may tap into stressful immigrant experiences that affect one's perceived self-worth and capture psychosocial consequences and social disadvantage left out by conventional socioeconomic measures.

EVERYDAY DISCRIMINATION, FAMILY CONTEXT, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS AMONG LATINO ADULTS IN THE UNITED STATES

Research suggests that experiences of discrimination can threaten the viabilities of families, which may subsequently affect an individual's mental health. Our study tests the hypotheses that (a) everyday discrimination will be indirectly associated with psychological distress through family cultural conflict and lower family cohesion among Latinos and (b) gender will moderate these relations. The sample included Latinos (N = 2,554) from the National Latino and Asian American Study. Path analysis revealed that among the total sample, greater exposure to everyday discrimination was associated with higher levels of family cultural conflict and, in turn, increased psychological distress. Multiple‐group path analysis revealed no effect modification by gender. Results underscore the need to consider sociocontextual mechanisms through which discrimination (a) may impinge on the mental health of Latinos and (b) may have implications for the development of mental health interventions that are culturally informed, thus needing to take into consideration family functioning and the role of contextual factors such as discrimination.

The Academic Freedom of Social Movement

The Academic Freedom of Social Movement Junaid Rana (bio) Hallowed terms like “democracy,” “freedom,” “values,” and “dialogue” or “free exchange,” even “morality,” are employed in unexpected ways and used to mask sheer irrationality. The righteous haze that surrounds such figurative potential blinds us to the literal violence before our eyes. When public discourse threatens to become illegal, what responsibilities do teachers have to speak about actions that some consider mere “ideology”? —Colin Dayan, “The Boycott Effect”1 Steven was in Urbana to give a book talk on his recently published Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom and wanted to see the campus.2 I was immediately nonplussed. “Really, you want a campus tour?” I responded. And then it quickly dawned on me, and I had to smile. Was this a subversive act? This was a public common, or so I’d been made to believe. It crossed my mind that walking on campus grounds might be interpreted as trespassing. Was a faculty member allowed to escort a colleague with a pending lawsuit against the university across campus? It didn’t matter. We did it anyway. I recalled how over a year earlier journalist Ali Abunimah was asked by campus police during that fateful Board of Trustees meeting if he was Professor Salaita.3 It was as if the officers were shown a picture of a brown guy with a shaved head the morning before and told to escort him off the premises should he appear. Earlier that afternoon Steven and I had been asked if we were brothers. In my head I said “brothers-in-arms.” And here we were taking a lap on the main quad. This most ordinary of things, the campus walking tour, suddenly felt exciting. I started to feel it around me. I’ve walked this quad hundreds of times and no one ever pays attention. Never have I noticed students looking at me, much less being the center of attention. That day, alongside Steven, there were a lot of double takes, some smiles, and the usual business of students enjoying the beautiful weather. As we circumambulated, I pointed out the spot [End Page 111] where the Student for Justice in Palestine apartheid wall in 2012 elicited the great headline: “‘Tear down this wall’ Hillel tells … Israel? (No, University of Illinois).”4 We then passed the north end of the quad, where over a year earlier in the damp, brisk air on September 11 a large protest denounced the administration and board for the firing of Professor Steven Salaita. There were many ironies on this campus walk. Here we were presumed lawbreakers, rebels, outlaws, even if for a few minutes. Or to some, perhaps, we were showing our true character. Engaging—as scholars are often wont to do—even against the odds. Steven ended our tour with the centerpiece of campus tourism: a selfie with Foellinger Auditorium, the image often used to represent the University of Illinois. In January 2014, almost two years earlier, I was on my way to Palestine for the second time in my life. I was part of the North American Academic and Labor delegation traveling to meet with members of Palestinian civil society. It was a demanding itinerary with the intention of learning from as many as possible, meeting with scholars, researchers, and organizations involved in a broad spectrum of activity. Arriving in Amman, Jordan, from Lebanon, I had just attended a conference at the American University in Beirut. At the conference there was a buzz over the growing intellectual interest in Palestine. The unprecedented growth of academic associations in the United States that had passed resolutions to join the academic boycott of Israel in response to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement was also creating an openness of academic inquiry and participation with the question of Palestine.5 Boycott is engagement, after all. The American Studies Association (ASA) had just passed an academic boycott resolution, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) declared support for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions, and the previous March the Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS) was the first U.S.-based academic institution to pass a boycott resolution...

The association of an inability to form and maintain close relationships due to a medical condition with anxiety and depressive disorders

BackgroundWhile low social support is a risk factor for mental illness, anxiety and depression's relationship with social impairment specifically resulting from a medical condition is poorly understood. We hypothesize that when a medical illness makes it difficult for people to form and maintain close relationships with others, they will be at increased risk for anxiety and depression. MethodsTwo nationally representative surveys, the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication and National Latino and Asian American Study, included 6805 adults with at least one medical illness and information on social impairment attributed to a medical condition. The Composite International Diagnostic Interview evaluated a 12-month history of anxiety and depressive disorders. Results8.2% of our sample had at least moderate difficulty in forming and maintaining close relationships due to a medical condition. In bivariate analyses, younger age, Latino ethnicity, less education, worse financial status, more chronic illnesses, physical health and discomfort, and problems with mobility, home management, and self-care were associated with this social impairment. In multivariable analyses accounting for possible confounders, there was a dose-dependent relationship between social impairment and the prevalence of anxiety and depression. LimitationsData are cross-sectional and our analyses are therefore unable to determine cause-and-effect relationships. ConclusionsAmong adults with one or more medical conditions, social impairment attributed to medical illness was associated with a significantly greater odds of anxiety and depression. Further clarification of this relationship could inform more targeted, personalized interventions to prevent and/or alleviate mental illness in those with chronic medical conditions.

Americans in the Pacific: Rethinking Race, Gender, Citizenship, and Diaspora at the Crossroads of Asian and Asian American Studies

Americans in the Pacific: Rethinking Race, Gender, Citizenship, and Diaspora at the Crossroads of Asian and Asian American Studies

How To Live Unsafely: Toward a Better Good Life for Asian American Studies

This essay contemplates the current state and stakes of Asian American studies in a “postracial” era by thinking alongside Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. A novel that transports readers to a “minor” world and follows the journey of an unheroic protagonist through a time loop, Yu’s work presses us to confront the future as a deeply compromised time-space. The novel’s invitation to reflect on temporality and the material conditions of life and death, I suggest, offers a point of entry for addressing the material challenges that impact Asian American studies as well as exploring how the field might be reimagined to account for new mechanisms of racialization in the academy. This essay engages the text’s affective imaginary to propose “living unsafely” and “failing purposefully” as critical and pedagogical practices that illuminate the dissident modes through which Asian American studies can inhabit the academy today.

Reflections on the Formation and Future of Asian American Studies

The ongoing demographic growth of the Asian American population enhances foundational support for Asian American studies; however, it also poses complex challenges for the formulation and direction of the field. Asian American studies has been shaped by transnational and regional economic and political conditions, as well as by the receptiveness and limitations of the academy, which has led to uneven disciplinary and institutional manifestations. This essay specifically analyzes what impact the transforming Asian American population has had on the formation of the field of Asian American studies and how the projected demographic growth will shape its future academic trajectory.

Association between Perceived Ethnic Discrimination and Health: Evidence from the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS).

The field of aging studies continues to better understand between-racial-group health disparities. Previous work provides empirical evidence for a statistical relationship between perceived discrimination and adverse health across all age groups. We contribute to the literature by investigating the quantitative relationship between Perceived Ethnic Discrimination (PED), Self-Rated Physical Health (SR-PH), Self-Rated Mental Health (SR-MH), and their combined score (SR-PH-MH). The cross-sectional observational study used data collected between 2002 and 2004 from the National Latino and Asian American Study (n=4,559; average age=41; 54% female; 18% Mexican; 36% Non-Mexican Latinos; 12% Chinese; 31% Non-Chinese Asians). We provide descriptive statistics for those below and at or above age 65. Multivariable linear models adjusting for age, sex, ethnicity, education, body mass index, and neighborhood perception provide evidence that although a small effect, PED explains between-people variance in SR-PH (β=-0.01; α=0.001), SR-MH (β=-0.03; α=0.001), and SR-PH-MH (β=-0.04; α=0.001). The analysis supports arguments that PED has a non-random association with health. As we continue to explore novel measures of frailty, markers of social stress should be considered.

Editor’s Preface

Editor’s Preface Anita Mannur In 2016 something rather remarkable happened in the literary world. Vietnamese American Viet Thanh Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his debut novel, The Sympathizer. Around the same time, The Vegetarian, a novel written by the South Korean Han Kang and translated by Deborah Smith won the Man Booker International Prize. The latter prize, not to be confused with the Man Booker Prize, was established in 2005 and biennially rewards an author for a body of work originally written in any language as long as it is widely available in English. Though Asians and Asian Americans have won these awards, as well as the Booker Prize, in years past (recall the success of Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai, Arundhati Roy, Aravind Adiga), something markedly different was at play in 2016 when these books were announced as winners. Their successes, though an evolving phenomenon, were not exclusively national phenomena. Media outlets and bloggers from around the world have reviewed both novels. In London, where I spent six weeks this summer, bookstore employees at Waterstones, London Review of Books, and Foyles all told me that these two titles were flying of the shelves. I myself got so caught up in “Vegetarian Sympathizer” fever, I purchased British editions of the books for my own collection. But most intriguingly, people are talking about these novels. Literature in translation, narratives about the refugee experience, a war story, stories about embodiment and violence by people of color are being read by the lay public. At a political and social moment when xenophobia seems at an all-time high, there is some solace one can take in knowing that fiction is providing alternative worldviews and that readers are hungry for more works like this. I am not so naïve as to extrapolate this as a sign [End Page v] of improving race relations or better transnational understanding; rather I wish to begin with this to think about the possible links across nations and borders that these works foreground. In particular, if we think of the art of collaboration as a driving force, what might our versions of Asian American studies at the end of eight years of an Obama presidency look like? The articles gathered in this issue are among the first under my editorship to decenter the United States within Asian American studies. Like the aforementioned novels and their networks of collaboration and circulation, the subjects of study in each article rest uneasily within narrow visions of any kind of national space. Robert Diaz considers queer Filipino cultural production in Canada, examining how queer diasporic migrants subtend the hierarchizing practices of Canadian multiculturalism and settler colonialism. He argues that artists like Julius Manapul and events like Miss Gay Philippines Canada enact utopic pursuits through cultural practices that create new possibilities for imagining collectivity, community, and belonging in Canada, beyond the pluralist narratives of diversity often maintained by the state. Sanae Nakatani considers how Nisei architects participated in major building projects in the mid-twentieth century. Noting that in the 1950s, Nisei architect Minoru Yamasaki designed a new U.S. consulate building in Kobe, and Isamu Noguchi created the Japanese garden for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, these Nisei cultural producers combined Japanese visual elements with modernist aesthetics in their works to signal their capability as a translator between the East and the West. Kareem Khubchandani considers the indie film Loins of Punjab as an exceptional representation of interracial desire in South Asian diasporic cultural production. Beyond the novelty of their representation, Khubchandani asserts that the film deploys a variety of black and South Asian performance styles to critique normative and disciplinary systems. Kristina Vassil’s article contributes to the burgeoning study of transnational texts written in languages other than English by providing a case study of Hosaka Ki’ichi’s The America That I See (1913–14), written as a sequel to Natsume Sōseki’s famous I Am a Cat (1905–6). Finally, Stephen Suh examines representations of Koreatown provided by three contemporary television/web programs: Ktown Cowboys (2009), K-Town (2012–13), and Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (2013). In so doing he considers how a...

Imitation

Imitation Timothy Yu (bio) The notion of poetic originality may seem elusive, even quaint, in the era of the global postmodern. The language of mimicry and hybridity frames our understanding of writing from postcolonial spaces, and more broadly helps us grasp the relationship of any minoritized or marginalized writing with regard to the dominant mode. And collage, appropriation of texts, and other styles of “uncreative writing” are the most prominent manifestations of the contemporary U.S. poetic avant-garde. My own poetry collection, 100 Chinese Silences, would seem to participate in this flight from originality. The poems in the book are all parodies, rewritings of poems by other modern and contemporary authors that thematize Asia in some way. A deep irony I’ve been aware of throughout this project is that Asians themselves have often been stereotyped by the West as mere imitators, incapable of the originality and invention that allegedly characterize Western modernity. Having, supposedly, no voice of my own, I was reduced to rewriting the works of those who had already spoken for me. Indeed, I strove to be a diligent pupil, trying to capture the voice, style, and rhythms of each poet I was imitating. But of course “imitation” is itself fundamental to poetry, whether in the broader sense of an “imitation of nature” or in the more specific sense of an apprenticeship grounded in the imitation of other poets’ works. As a master term for global poetics, “imitation” may have the advantage of signifying a conscious inhabitation of another text or voice, one that is fully aware of its belated, secondary nature, and of the relationships of power that connect the “original” and the “copy.” And yet a poetic imitation is not merely a copy. It is an attempt to “sound like” someone else, but as a means toward finding one’s own way of speaking. [End Page 380] Timothy Yu timothy yu is the author of 100 Chinese Silences (2016) and Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian American Poetry since 1965 (2009). He is professor of English and Asian American studies and director of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Copyright © 2016 Johns Hopkins University Press

Do spouses matter? Discrimination, social support, and psychological distress among Asian Americans.

Perceived discrimination poses risks for psychological distress among Asian Americans, but the differential impact of general unfair treatment and racial discrimination has not been examined. Although social support from distal sources reduces discrimination-related distress either directly or as a buffer, the unique roles of spousal support have remained understudied. Nativity status was examined as another moderator of these relationships to resolve previous inconsistent findings regarding its relationship to the discrimination-distress link. Data were from 1,626 U.S.- and foreign-born Asian American adults (Mage = 42.17 years; n = 1,142 married/cohabiting) in the nationally representative National Latino and Asian American Study, who reported on experiences of unfair treatment, racial discrimination, social supports from spouses, family, friends, and neighborhood, and psychological distress. Hierarchical multiple regressions showed that both unfair treatment and racial discrimination predicted psychological distress, and spousal support predicted distress above and beyond distal forms of social support in the context of perceived discrimination. Moderation analyses revealed that spousal support buffered against negative psychological consequences of unfair treatment, but not racial discrimination. Spousal support was not differentially protective as a function of nativity; however, U.S.-born respondents reacted with greater distress to unfair treatment than their foreign-born counterparts. Psychological effects of both general and race-based discrimination, and the unique contributions of distinct sources of social support, are important to understanding adjustment and cultural transition among Asian Americans. Nativity differentially influences effects of unfair treatment. Implications for future research are discussed.

Cultural Studies

Cultural Studies Vernadette Gonzalez, Chair, Tony Tiongson, and Tamara Ho Rachel Lee’s The Exquisite Corpse of Asian America: Biopolitics, Biosociality, and Posthuman Ecologies (New York University Press, 2014) is a book that returns us to biology, challenging and enriching the very foundations of Asian American cultural and literary critique and its premise that the category of Asian America is a social construction. Instead of being reactionary and essentialist, Lee’s ambitious assembling of technoscientific and humanistic approaches allows for a serious consideration of the most timely and urgent questions that we face in the age of global capital’s optimization of certain lives over others. Beginning with a seemingly straightforward question about Asian American artists’ obsession with body parts, Lee’s capacious exploration of human (and other) life presents the biological as paradoxically central to Asian American cultural studies’ move toward a subjectless theory while noting how the biological (through the ethics of disability, cross-species interpenetration, multiscalar ecologies) operates through familiar matrices of power that could be characterized as Asiatic. In other words, Lee takes the body—in its broadest, most generous definition—seriously in order to consider the posthuman (or the extra- or interhuman) and the kinds of emergent imaginations, materialities, and futures we must look to for an ethical Asian American critique. Lee innovatively brings traditions of Asian American cultural critique into conversation with performance studies, and feminist and queer (or “femiqueer,” to use her phrasing) scholarship in medical humanities to produce a truly interdisciplinary work that will have a profound impact on the field. Her book is a sustained meditation on and extension of theories of biopolitics and biosociality and their organizing violence while also an impressive model for how Asian American studies as a field can uniquely inflect and should engage with new technologies, science studies, and what Donna Haraway has dubbed “naturcultures.” Presenting plasticized human flesh, teeth, peristaltic and vaginal functions, chimeric ecologies, mental disability, and illness in Asian American cultural productions, Lee deftly parses out how a more profound and expansive understanding of biology can provide a dynamic rereading of family formation and theories of race and governmentality. Her nuanced close readings of an eclectic archive (literature, performance, stand-up comedy) illuminate how the body or the bios in its manifold forms are central to how social life is governed and vice versa. The Exquisite Corpse of Asian America offers a more complex understanding of power and an ethics of agency that is at once paradigm-shifting, generative, and hopeful. [End Page 425] Vernadette Gonzalez, Chair University of Hawai‘i at Manoa Tony Tiongson University of New Mexico Tamara Ho University of California, Riverside Copyright © 2016 Johns Hopkins University Press

Do Recommendations by Healthcare Providers, Family-members, Friends, and Individual Self-Efficacy Increase Uptake of Hepatitis B Screening? Results of a Population-Based Study of Asian Americans.

Background:Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection disproportionately affects Asian Americans but HBV screening rates among Asian American are substantially low. This study examines the impact of multiple recommendations and self-efficacy on HBV screening uptake among Asian Americans.Methods:Data for this study were from 872 Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese recruited for a liver cancer prevention program in the Washington D.C – Baltimore metropolitan area.Results:410 (47%) respondents reported previous HBV screening. Only 19.8% recalled a physician recommendation. Higher level of HBV screening was reported among people who had physician recommendation, family member recommendation or friend recommendation. Perceived self-efficacy was also an important predictor to HBV screening. The effect of self-efficacy was significant in subgroup analyses among Chinese and Korean, but not for Vietnamese.Conclusion and Global Health Implications:The disproportional prevalence of HBV infection among Asian Americans is considered to be one of the most important health disparities for Asian population. Understanding the condition and screening behavior in this population is especially important. Our findings suggest that recommendation from physician and social networks should be encouraged for HBV screening among Asian Americans. Both recommendation and self-efficacy of HBV screening are important psychosocial constructs to be targeted in liver cancer prevention interventions.

Keywords for Asian American Studies ed. by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Linda Trinh Võ, K. Scott Wong

Keywords for Asian American Studies ed. by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Linda Trinh Võ, K. Scott Wong

Homegrown Terror: Projective Identification and Wafaa Bilal’s Domestic Tension

At the intersection of Asian American studies, performance studies, and psychoanalytic theory, this article issues a study of the work of performance artist Wafaa Bilal. Drawing on the work of psychoanalytic theorist Melanie Klein and, in particular, Klein’s theory of projective identification, Homegrown Terror issues a theory of projective identification’s role in the process of racialization, and, in particular, the production of the racialized figure of the so-called homegrown terrorist. Bilal’s work allows us to see the process through which members of the dominant culture disaggregate their own fear and terror of the Middle Eastern, South and Central Asian American body (apprehended as Muslim or Arab), externalizing these negative affects by projecting them onto and in some cases into the body of the racialized subject.

Tung Pok Chin: A Paper Son Poet in New York

Classical-style poetry is a neglected genre in the study of Chinese American literature. Except for the Angel Island Poetry and the Songs of Gold Mountain ( Jinshan geji 金山歌集), no substantial research has been done on the enormous amount of classical-style poems published in San Francisco and New York. This article attempts to explore this uncharted territory by examining the poetry of Tung Pok Chin 陳松柏 (1916–88, aka Lai Bing Chan 黎屏塵) and his story as a Chinese immigrant. Chin moved to the United States in 1934 as a paper son. He joined the American navy during World War II and eventually established his own laundry business in Brooklyn. Since the late 1940s, Chin published a significant amount of his classical-style poetry in the China Daily News ( Meizhou huaqiao ribao 美洲華僑日報), a left-wing newspaper operated by the pro-communist Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance. With the help of his daughter, he also wrote a memoir in English narrating his assimilation into American society. His poetry, though not particularly refined, similarly records his experiences and comments regarding American life and politics. Based on the source materials found in the Tung Pok Chin Papers archived in New York University, his memoir, and the poems he published in the China Daily News , herein I illuminate how Chin adopted a traditional form of poetry as his expressive vehicle and, with the narrative power of his English memoir, how he used his poems to construct a social identity. The article also relates Chin’s work to the broader context of Asian American studies, as well as the classical poetry community and its development in New York, and ponders his significances in the history of Chinese American literature.

Book Review: Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia

Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia is a comprehensive four-volume reference work that consists of 315 in-depth entries discussing many aspects of Asian American culture. Editor Mary Yu Danico, a past-president of the Association for Asian American Studies and currently a professor at California State Polytechnic University, states in the introduction, “We recognize that it is impossible to discuss every facet of Asian American society, but we have put forth our best efforts to examine the historical, social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of our society through the lens of multiple disciplines and voices” (xxv).