著者

村上 由見子

出版者

立教大学

雑誌

立教アメリカン・スタディーズ (ISSN:13464825)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.21, pp.71-92, 1999

著者

村上 由見子

出版者

東京大学大学院総合文化研究科附属アメリカ太平洋地域研究センター

雑誌

アメリカ太平洋研究 (ISSN:13462989)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.2, pp.21-34, 2002-03

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Although "Asian American" has been an officially recognized term only since 1968, we have to go back all the way to the mid-nineteenth century when the first wave of Asian immigrants arrived in the United States of America. They brought with them provincial "low cultures" of their home countries. Chinese laborers, for example, needed their work songs to sing during railroad construction, while Japanese in Hawaii plantations created the new blues-like "holehole bushi." Their sense of being "deracine" promoted the creative development of a new Asian American culture. In a historical perspective, we see an interesting overlap in time between the notorious Immigration Act of 1924 which banned all Asian immigrants and the prime time of the American Jazz Age. In the 1930s, Japanese farmers also shared the sufferings of the Joad family in the novel "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck. Their harsh life is also depicted in the short stories written later by Nisei writers. They also wrote about their experiences as camp interns inside the barbed wire during World War II. Meanwhile, the East West Players (EWP) of Los Angeles manifested themselves as Asian Americans in 1965, making theirs one of the first groups to support this cause. Many Asian American playwrights made their debuts in the 1970s and the 1980s through the EWP. This helped to open an era of multicultural/multiethnic diversity in the U.S., as major publishers grew aware of the new talent flowering among Asian Americans. Now that today we actively discuss such notions as "diaspora," "transnational" and "hybrid," it is more important than ever to examine how Asian Americans totalling 10, 242, 998 in the 2000 census grew to be a part of the U.S. cultural scene.