At the first Filipinx Studies Conference last year, I spoke with one of the presenters--Angel Trazo--whose work dealt with boba shops in California as a safe space for Asian American youth. What does this have to do with transnationalism? Besides boba’s history with Taiwanese immigration to the U.S., Trazo noted that Filipino American youth, for example, claimed a space for themselves and created social networks with others in these boba shops. In doing so, these youth actively negotiated their identities and social networks, which is one aspect of a diaspora according to Braziel and Mannur. Their definition of diaspora as “identities formed in relation to… homelands” (Anderson and Lee 25) seem to shift a focus from a physical diaspora to an emotional/mental one. Other scholars in Lee’s chapter note the fluidity of diasporic studies and its potential for rethinking US/Euro-centric nationalism as well as Asian American studies itself, emphasizing the focus on transnationalism. Schiller’s chapter dives deeper into this diasporic discourse which brings up the idea of lived simultaneity which boils down to settling in one nation while maintaining connections beyond national borders. What exactly does “cosmopolitanism” mean as Robbins describes it on page 28?
Citations:
Anderson, W. W., & Lee, R. G. (2005). Displacements and diasporas: Asians in the Americas. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Image source: https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/i-tea-davis-2?start=30
No comments:
Post a Comment