At the age of cultural globalization, transnational reading is not only possible but also necessary to the imagination of Chineseness. It is in transnationality that the local, be it Chinese America, Mainland China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong, is informed by the global imagined Chinese communities. In other words, nationalism, including cultural nationalism, finds its place in transnational experiences.
Transnationalism has been one of the most prominent and developed directions in the studies of Asian American literature, as witnessed by Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits, edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim et al. In this remarkable 2006 publication, Shirley Geok-lin et al. argue that Asian American literature is “both U.S. bounded and situated in global, transnational, and diasporic matrices” and that “[t]heoretical intersectionalities … are now crucial modes of operation in considering the discursive powers of these ethnically identified texts. Intersections of the imagination are contextualized in a historical specificity of location—viewed simultaneously as local and global, national, and transnational.”2 While flexibility and heterogeneity are emphasized in this new definition of Asian American literature, the mapping of Asian America as interrelated to Asia is most relevant to my project. Not only do the editors recognize the impacts of “new immigrant national groups” and “the increasing presence of transnational Asian communities,” but they are also aware that many young Asian American writers are first-generation immigrants, whose national allegiance could be to both United States and Asia.3 The editors conclude that “Asian American literature can no longer be viewed as merely a minor ethnic province of a domestic American canon” and that it is necessary for “critics to regard Asian American ethnicity also as a global identity formation.”4
Begona Simal and Elisabetta Marino’s Transnational, National, and Personal Voices: New Perspectives on Asian American and Asian Diasporic Women Writers (2004) also demonstrates the interconnectedness between Asian America and the Asian Diaspora, emphasizing the multiple layers of cultural identification. In contrast, Judith Oster turns this identity flexibility to another ethnic group and is aspired to search for “affinities” between Chinese America and Jewish America in Crossing Cultures: Creating Identity in Chinese and Jewish American Culture.5