ABSTRACT
In one very real sense the first generation of Asians, those intrepid adventurers who first broached the Pacific shores of America, have been the forgotten ones in the study and teaching of Asian American literature. Not that they do not appear in the accepted canon, they must and do, but rather, they do not appear as authors rather than subjects, with two outstanding exceptions, Carlos Bulosan and Younghill Kang. It is important to understand the reasons for this, for therein lie both the constraints and the stimuli that defined the field through its first decade, and, in good part, its second. It is my sense that the past several years have marked a turning point and expansion into broader concerns, many of which are more closely linked to the traditional aims of literary scholarship and the field of Asian Studies.
