California Dreaming

Christine Bacareza Balance is associate professor in Performing & Media Arts and Asian American Studies at Cornell University. Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns is associate professor in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. David K. Yoo is vice provost, Institute of American Cultures, and professor of Asian American studies and history at the University of California, Los Angeles.

To be sure, California Dreaming fills a remarkable gap within Asian American studies, an interdiscipline that often rehearses its Pacific state origins: born out of West Coast student protests and shaped by multiple migrations to and fro, Asian American studies has most recently endeavored to situate its growth as "east of California" (as evidenced by other regional collections concentrated on the U.S. South, the Midwest, and New England). What sets this collection apart from others in the field is its truly interdisciplinary purview and its aesthetically motivated regional focus. California Dreaming brings together works by an impressive intergenerational group of Asian American scholars, artists, performers, and writers, who offer fresh and engaging insights on California by providing a richly textured juxtaposition of scholarly essays alongside a number of engaging literary, theatrical, and performative texts. This anthology is significant because it highlights the diversity of Asian American literary and artistic practices by Filipino/a, South Asian American, Vietnamese American, Japanese American, Cambodian American, Korean American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Latino, Sri Lankan American, and Chinese American, queer, and mixed race practitioners.