留學向來是形成亞裔美國社室的重要渠道,但是留學生既內且外的跨國樣態卻使得他們在亞美社畫中處於一個曖昧的位置:一方面是創建中產亞美社會的先鋒,另一方面則是暫居美國、尚待同化的外國人。亞美文先生產因而對留學生的形象同時有著嘲諷,悲憫與禮讚等不同模式的再現。究竟亞美文先生產如何再現留學生?這些再現如何描述留學生與亞美社童的關條,又暗示著甚麼樣的他者想像?藉著分析水仙花(Sui Sin Far)的短篇故事、任璧蓮(Gish Jen)、崔素珊(Susan Choi)與張嵐(Lan Samantha Chang)的小說,以及哈金在〈自由生活〉裹的自我再現,本文指出同時處於亞美社羣的內部與外部的留學生,乃是亞美社羣的親密他者。留學生形象的變形值得我們深入關注與思考,因為留學生的(自我)再現協商著亞美社羣與亞洲的關係,同時也重新界定與介入了亞美文先生產。
Studying abroad has been a significant element in the Asian American formation, but the peculiar transnational existence of foreign students, which are both inside and outside Asian America, has rendered them an ambivalent figure in Asian American cultural production. On the one hand, they are regarded as pioneers of the bourgeois Asian American society; on the other hand, they continue to be depicted as temporary, unassimilated foreigners. Asian American culture hence has different modalities of representing the foreign student figure from glorification, mockery, to sympathy. How has Asian American cultural production represented the foreign student? What politics of the other do these representations entail, and how does it help us measure the foreign student's relationship to Asian America? This article studies the representations of the foreign student figure in Asian American cultural production from the works of Sui Sin Far, through the novels of Gish Jen, Susan Choi, Lan Samantha Chang, and Ha Jin to contend that the foreign student is Asian America's intimate other, and the variety of the representation entails a thinking of Asian/American relationality that Asian American literary and cultural studies in the post-identity moment has yet to contend with.