Economic Citizens

Introduction    1
       
       
       
1.    The Promise of Exchange:
Production, Circulation, and Consumption Within Chinatown Ethnographies
    45
       
2.    The Universality of Exchange:
Japanese American Travel Narratives and the Emergence of the Global Citizen
    88
       
       
3.    The Embodiment of Exchange:
Asian Mail-Order Brides, the Threat of Global Capitalism, and the Rescue of the U.S. Nation-State    122
       
       
       
4.    The Logic of Exchange:
Ordering the Chaos of Twentieth Century Chinese Women’s History    156
       
       
       
       
    Notes    193
       
       
       
    Bibliography    199
       
 

Christine So is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University.

In the past fifty years, according to Christine So, the narratives of many popular Asian American books have been dominated by economic questions — what money can buy, how money is lost, how money is circulated, and what labor or objects are worth.  Focusing on books that have achieved mainstream popularity, Economic Citizens shows that while Asian Americans have been excluded from the larger national body — in fact, prohibited from circulation — Asian American books that emphasize economic and social exchange circulate widely.
With penetrating insight, So examines literary works that have been successful in the U.S. marketplace but have been read previously by critics largely as narratives of alienation or assimilation, including Fifth Chinese Daughter, Flower Drum Song, Falling Leaves and Turning Japanese.  In contrast to other studies that have focused on the invisibility of Asian Americans, Economic Citizens examines how Asian Americans have entered into the public sphere.

In narratives dominated by money, exchange is the route to Asian American visibility.