Diasporic Longings

Abstract

Using diaspora as a framework for reading Asian American literature expands the geographical and temporal contours of what it means to be Asian American. Although late-twentieth-century US popular culture was marked by multicultural ideologies of American citizenship, “diaspora” captures another way of thinking about Asian Americans: as immigrants who are subject to multiple projects of nationalism, and who embody diverse forms of citizenship. Whereas writers like Bharati Mukherjee reproduce dominant ideologies of US exceptionalism and multicultural citizenship, for writers such as Meena Alexander, the production of diasporic locality ripples across generations, as she ties together South Asia with North America, the Middle East with Europe. Rewriting immigration as a story of diaspora emphasizes the social, economic, political, and psychic ties that immigrants construct to Asia and to the Americas. Diaspora thus reconfigures who and what we know as “Asian American, " moving away from linear narratives of departure and arrival, towards transnational categories of belonging and citizenship.