Imagine Otherwise

“Chuh’s award-winning strategy of concretizing this space of enquiry and solidifying it, diversifying it, enriching it, through a specifically and critically Americanist lens is to revisit various … narratives of Asian Americana, while drawing on theoretical perspectives from American-Continental philosophy, critical race theory, legal theory, and feminist jurisprudential scholarship.” - Kyoo Lee , Comparatist

“Kandice Chuh’s Imagine Otherwise: On Asian Americanist Critique offers the most explicit and sustained interrogation of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in Asian American studies. . . . The most original and provocative application of the transnational appears in Chuh’s consideration of Japanese American history and literary texts.” - Laura Hyun Yi Kang, Feminist Studies

"Imagine Otherwise compellingly reimagines the goals and paradigms of Asian American studies. . . . Chuh demonstrates her argument through rich, interdisciplinary readings of literary texts, historical and legal documents, and academic rubrics." - Yoonmee Chang , American Literature

"Kandice Chuh argues that in the current study of Asian Americans, the critique of social inequality must overcome the impossible insistence on a uniform ethnic subject. She performs a daring deconstruction of the recurrence to ideas of authenticity and identity, discusses the pitfalls of essentialized concepts of 'activism' and 'community,' and encourages us to put the case of Asian Americans towards a more general critique of racialized U.S. society. Her intervention challenges us to think differently, to ‘imagine otherwise.’"
  - Lisa Lowe, author of Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics

“Imagine Otherwise is a provocative work. It questions the terms in which Asian American studies have been understood and offers a set of exciting theoretical alternatives, each of which is substantiated by close readings of literary texts. Our understanding of Asian American subjectivity is significantly enhanced in the process.” - David Palumbo-Liu, author of Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier