Connective Ruptures; Intimate Antagonisms

The ties that bind the fictive, but all too real, ‘Asia’ and ‘America’ are often played down or relegated to secondary narratives when telling either place’s various histories and myths. On the contrary, as the lives this digital archive showcases would suggest, Asia and America are co-constituted, continuously deployed as mirrors for each other even as their material realities diverged throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. The hyphen in Asia-America, thus, does not constitute an unhappy marriage between two opposing identities, but reflects the chimeric quality of both imagined communities.

The oral interviews and research highlighted in Living in Asia-America were the final assignments for students enrolled in Introduction to Asian American Studies at the University of Chicago. The course was taught by Niu Teo and Yasser Ali Nasser.