ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits transnational sentiments in earlier Asian American texts and contrasts them with more recent ones to show how Asian Americans have come along socio-economically and politically in the last half century. In the discussion of Asian transnationalism, heterogeneity is juxtaposed with mobility to alert us against pitfalls and also to remind us of historical differences within the community called Asian America. In John Okada's novel No-No Boy, set in post-World War II America, the Japanese American protagonist Ichiro is torn between his mother's blind loyalty to Japanese imperialism and his own urgent desire to belong on American soil. During the Second World War, Ichiro, out of disappointment with the US government's mass internment of Japanese Americans as well as obedience to his mother's wishes, refuses to serve in the US army to defend a country that has mistreated him and his fellow Japanese Americans.
