Where I Have Never Been: Migration, Melancholia, and Memory in Asian American Narratives of Return

Patricia Chu, professor of English, presents narratives from 100 diasporic Asian American offspring who symbolically “returned” to their ancestral countries. These narratives (including tales of actual returns by Asian American immigrants) depict migration-related melancholia, question official histories and portray Asian diasporic families as flexible and transpacific. She recasts Asian Americans not only as minorities in America, but also as global subjects in narratives of educational exchange, commerce and global migration.