Across the Pacific

A lecture series sponsored by the Asia Society

Across the Pacific explores in descriptive and critical ways how transnational relationships and interactions in Asian American communities are manifested, exemplified, and articulated within the international context of the Pacific Rim. In eight ground-breaking essays, contributors address new meanings and practices of Asian Americans in the global transformation of the post-Civil Rights, post-Cold War, postmodern and postcolonial era.

Asian Americans have always been a trans-Pacific community—and are now more than ever. Since the changes in immigration laws in 1965, after decades of exclusion from the United States, Asians are once more immigrating to the U.S. Entering the U.S. upon the culmination of the Civil Rights movement, Asians becoming Asian Americans have joined a self-consciously multicultural society. Asian economies have roared onto the world stage, creating new markets while circulating capital and labor at an unprecedented scale and intensity, thereby helping drive the forces of modern globalization.

Considering issues of diaspora, transmigrancy, assimilation, institutionalized racism, and community, Across the Pacific offers essays on such topics as the impact of the new migrations on Asian American subjectivity and politics, the role of Asian Americans in Pacific rim economies, and cultural expressions of dislocation among contemporary Asian American writers. It asks: If Asian Americans are to assume the role of bridge builders across the Pacific, what are the opportunities, the risks, the promises, the perils?