Cultural Compass

Martin F. Manalansan is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

• Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Writing Asian America: Locating the Field and the Home 1. Performing Ethnography in Asian American Communities: Beyond the Insider-versus-Outsider Perspective Linda Trinh Vo 2. Researching One's Own: Negotiating Co-ethnicity in the Field Miliann Kang 3. Chineseness across Borders: A Multi-Sited Investigation of Chinese Diaspora Identities Andrea Louie Part II: The Sites of Identity and Community 4. Of Palengke and Beauty Pageants: Filipino American-Style Politics in Southern California Rick Bonus 5. Making the Biopolitical Subject: Cambodian Immigrants, Refugee Medicine and Cultural Citizenship in California Aihwa Ong 6. Everyday Identity Work at an Asian Pacific AIDS Organization Gina Masequesmay 7. Betrayal, Class Fantasies and the Filipino Nation in Daly City Benito M. Vergara, Jr. 8. Sudden and Subtle Challenge: Disparity in Conception of Marriage and Gender in the Korean American Community Kyeyoung Park Part III: Beyond Asian America and Back 9. Identity in the Diaspora: Surprising Voices Karen Leonard 10. Forged Transnationality and Oppositional Cosmopolitanism Louisa Schein 11. Cultural Encompass: Looking for Direction in the Asian American Comic Book Timothy Keeyen Choy Contributors

"A pioneering anthology, this book foregrounds ethnography's pivotal contributions to critical inquiry in Asian American Studies, Ethnic Studies and American Studies. The essays articulate the dilemmas and possibilities that arise when minoritarian subjects write about our own communities, adding fresh voices to contemporary discussions of ethnography in Cultural Studies and in the social sciences." -Dorinne Kondo, Professor of Anthropology and American Studies and Ethnicity; Director, Asian American Studies at the University of Southern California, and author of Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace and About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater "Cultural Compass is a thought-provoking collection that effectively stages ethnography as a means of interrogating bounded notions of community and identity, setting new terrains of debate for the geographies of transnationalism and its study. It promises to be of great value not only for Asian American Studies and Anthropology, but for interdisciplinary work in Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies and Diaspora Studies as well." -Kamala Visweswaran, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin "Innovative, informative, and intelligent, the essays in the collection reconfigure ethnography according to the experiences of Asians in the United States. Individually, they provide incisive portraits of the various Asian American communities; collectively, they chart new directions for a critical Asian American ethnography that attends to multiple strategies and readings and to multiple sites of political struggles, cultural practices, and social activism." -Yen Le Espiritu, author of Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws, and Love