This interview explores various aspects of Elaine Kim, a third-generation Korean American scholar and one of the pioneers in Asian American literary and cultural studies. The issues covered include her family and educational background, the writing and publication of her groundbreaking Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context, the campus and racial politics, her critical intervention into Asian American Studies, the visual and social/sociological turns in her intellectual trajectory, the relationship between feminism, racism, and (cultural) nationalism, the balance between the academy and the society, the interracial relationship between Asian Americans and African Americans, the transnational perspective on Asian American literature, and the role of a female Asian American intellectual.