発刊にあたって

海外からのメッセージ
1．Russell Leong（Amerasia Journal編集長）
2．Amy Ling（ウィスコンシン大学教授）
3．Mitsuye Yamada（詩人）

シンポジューム特集 《アジア系作家と現代アメリカ》
アジア系アメリカ文学通覧 （植木照代）
司会　はじめに（植木照代）
発表
1．「オリエンタル」から「アジア系アメリカ人」へ （竹沢泰子）
2．M.H. KingstonとFrank Chinに見るアジア系アメリカ人像（植木照代）
3．“Milk and Momotaro”―Rethinking Japanese/American Binary（Gayle K. Sato）
4．境界線上の表現―ベトナム系女性表現者　Trinh T. Minh-haを中心に（小林富久子）

論文
・A Reading Of Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine with a focus on the image of transplantation（石原敏子）
・Telling the Lives：Maternal Narratives in Amy Tan’s
The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife （小沢円）
・The Meiji, the Issei Idea of the American Dream（Philip Grant 野崎京子）
・Jessica HagedornのDogeatersを読む―「食べる」ことと「飢える」ことの意味（河原崎やす子）

クロスロード《アジア系アメリカ文学と私》
書評
AALAライブラリー
AALA活動報告
AALA会則
編集後記

【発刊に当たって】
　1989年5月、4人の発起人によって始められ た「アジア系アメリカ文学研究会」は、5年の間に10倍を越える会員を擁するようになった。年間5回の研究会と1泊2日の夏期フォ ーラムを神戸、京都、東京と、時に応じて場所を変えながら会を重ねてきた。毎回時間を大幅に越す活発な議論と“at home”な雰囲気の中にもピリッとした緊張感が漂うのは、報告者のよく準備された発表とテキストをよく読んで参加する会員の熱 意のお陰であるのは言うまでもないが、参加者をそのように仕向けるアジア系作家の文学そのものの魅力、吸引力のせいではない かと思っている。この創刊号の（クロスロード―アジア系アメリカ文学と私）で語られているように、会員のアジア系アメリカ文 学との出会いはさまざまである。しかし共通していることは、文学を読む楽しさを味わうと同時に、アメリカに少数民族として生 きるアジア系の人々の抱える問題を自身の生き方と関わらせて受けとめている点である。
　東西ドイツの統一、ソ連邦の解体で脱 イデオロギーの時代を迎えた世界は、21世紀に向けて経済、平和、環境、あらゆる領域でボーダレス化、グローバル化する方向に ある。一方ではイデオロギーのタガで締め付けられていた民族的主張が各地で噴出、国家を分裂させる勢いになっている。60年代 以降のアメリカでも従来のＷＡＳＰへの一元的同化という論理に代えて、Ethnicityを肯定する多民族多元文化の論理が受け入れら れてきた。それはアメリカの文化をより豊かに活性化するプラスの面と、一方では過激な民族的分離主義を生み出すことにもなっ ている。各民族の持つ　Ethnicity　を専重しつつ、なお国家としての統一体を保っていくことは、今後の世界の団々（日本も例 外なく）の課題となっている。その意味でもアメリカにおけるアジア系の人々の存在とその文学は興味深い視点と洞察を与えてく れそうである。
　5年という一区切りを終え、AALA Journal 第1号の発刊の運びとなったことを嬉しく思うと同時に、次の5年に向け て研究会の学びがさらに深まり、海外の研究者との交流、他学会との学際研究の輪が広がることを期待したい。（植木照代）

Messages from Overseas for the Inaugural Issue of AALA Journal

To: Asian American Literature Association of Japan.
　At the beginning of the 20th century, an anonymous Chinese immigrant detained on Angel Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay carved out these lines on the barrack wall: “As a traveler in wind and dust… I crossed to the end　of the ocean.” Eighty years later, these early lines of Asian American literature　have crossed the Pacific again to become materials for scholars of Asian　American literature in Asia. It is fitting that our literature in America, be it　poetry, short story, or novel, is now making other journeys–through time, space, and generation–to influence new readers. Japanese writers and scholars have, at least from the 19th century onwards, been at the forefront of reading and translating contemporary materials from foreign countries both from Asia and the West. However, a Japanese journal devoted specifically to Asian American literature is indeed a unique event and endeavor. I am sure the exchange of views between Japanese and Asian American scholars, writers, and students will enrich the field as a whole. What is most gratifying is that the early work of often anonymous (wuming) women and men Asian American writers is not lost to the world. Their words will now travel, electronically, from memory to modem in your journal.

Russell Leong
Editor, Amerasia Joturnal, UCLA Asian American Studies Center
Author, The Country of Dreams and Dust: Poems

　My trip to Japan, in May 1994, with lecture stops in Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe and a photo-research tour of Nagasaki in pursuit of Madame Butterfly, was extremely fruitful, both personally and professionally. As a Chinese American, born in Beijing, whose earliest chilhood memories are of Japanese bombing raids of Chungking, it was balm for old wounds to discover old friends and new in Japan receiving me with so much generosity and painstaking care. As a teacher and scholar of Asian American Literature, I was greatly pleased to find interest in this relatively new subject flourishing so far from home, and yet, in a sense, Japan is one of its many ancestral homes and a proper place for its nurturing.
　The launching of this new journal on the fifth anniversary of the AALA is evidence of the health of this interest, as well as testimony to the enthusiasm and energy of its editors and the AALA members. On this momentous occasion, I greet the first issue of the AALA Journal in Japan with great delight and warm interest, as I would the birth of a child. I wish both the journal and its editorial mother [or parents?] a long and fruitful life. Not only will you, within your covers, bring together and foster understanding and appreciation of Asians of many different ancestral backgrounds, but you are destined, as Longfellow once wrote, to leave “foot-prints in the sands of time.”

Amy Ling
Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Author, Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry

I am honored to have been asked to contribute a few words for the inaugural edition of your academic journal. This is indeed an auspicious occasion for Asian American literary studies, still a relatively new area of study ever in the United States. It means the discipline of Asian American studies itself has reached a new level of international recognition. It also means possibilities for international exchange and understanding between Asians and Asian Americans.

In the 1960’s, ethnic American students and students of color in the American colleges and universities demanded academic studies more relevant to their own needs because they realized that most of what constituted American education meant white Eurocentric education. Ethnic studies allowed them to understand that they can be authentic Americans without denying their cultural heritages. For Asian Americans, it was not enough to learn about their Asian ancestors which was provided by the Asian studies programs. They wanted to know about the contributions of Asians in America and to study the ways that Asian cultures interact with the dominant American culture.

Due to this new consciousness, Asian American writers today write out of an awareness of the multiplicity of voices among us with a history of one hundred fifty years of immigration behind us. We have discovered that Asian American writers have not been absent through those years, but only invisible for early writers such as Sadakichi Hartmann did not fit into the canonical orthodoxies of European American literary standards. We are still in the process of defining what constitutes an Asian American writer. Is our lingua franca American English, or should the early immigrants Writing about their experiences in their native tongues also be included among our historical experiences? We are keenly aware that there is much more worp to be done in developing the field, and we welcome the interest that the Japanese scholars have shown in the past years in researching writings by Americans of Asian ancestry.

On a personal level, I have benefited greatly by the attention my writings have received from Japanese critics during the past few years. Their interpretations have given my works a new dimension very different from readers on this side of the Pacific Ocean. I have found that they provided me with deeper insight about my own identity as a Japanese American.

As we expand the perspectives in the arts and the humanities, we make academia more responsive to a rapidly changing world. Asian Americanists in Asia and the United States can open new intellectual frontiers as well as contribute towards making our societies more sensitive to cultural differences.

I thank the Asian American Literature Association of Japan for your groundbreaking efforts and wish you every success with this academic journal.

Mitsuye Yamada
Poet, Camp Notes and Other Poems, Desert Run: Poems and Stories.
Founder, Multicultural Women Writers of Orange County,
Member, Board of Directors, International USA Amnesty