在美國曆史中沉浮的亞裔美國人

Early in Erika lee’s sweeping “The Making of Asian America: A History” she suggests that Asian-Americans constantly cycle between being labeled “good Asians” versus “bad Asians,” depending on the shifting and often contradictory politics behind their immigration and settlement. We were a “despised when Asian immigrants threatened 19th- and early-20th-century white labor, yet since the Cold War we’ve been described as a “model minority,” valorizing the promise of American meritocracy. The capricious ease with which those labels get swapped highlights how our precarious social position rests on our perceived utility: as cheap labor, as anti-Communist soldiers, as overachievers meant to -shame other communities of . In doing all of this “work,” Lee argues, Asian-Americans have redefined not only immigration politics and racial categories but also “the very essence of what it means to be American.”

在李漪蓮(Erika Lee)的《亞裔美國人的故事》(The Making of Asian America: A History)是一本內容詳盡的著作，全書開頭，她認爲亞裔美國人不斷在被標註爲 “好亞洲人”和“壞亞洲人”之間循環。這取決於移民與定居背後，不斷變化而且通常是自相矛盾的政治。當19世紀到20世紀初，亞洲移民威脅到白人勞工時，我們是“被人看不起的少數族裔”。然而到了冷戰期間，我們又被描述爲“模範少數族裔”，以便穩定美國學術界精英的信心。這種標籤變換的隨意性，顯示出我們不可靠的社會地位是怎樣取決於我們在人們心目中的功能：廉價勞工、反共鬥士、 乃至令所有其他膚色的社區都相形見絀的超級優秀學生。李漪蓮認爲，亞裔美國人在做這些“工作”的同時，不僅重新定義了移民政治與種族類別，也重新定義了“身爲美國人的真正本質。”

Lee’s comprehensive history traces the experiences of myriad Asian-American communities, from Chinese laborers in 1850s California to Hmong refugees in 1980s Minnesota. Lee is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, and she makes extensive use of both secondary and primary sources to collect the stories that go into the book. In that regard, “The Making of Asian America” shares strong similarities with other broad, inclusive Asian-American histories, most obviously Ronald Takaki’s “Strangers From a Different Shore,” first published in 1989. Lee’s book doesn’t radically depart from its predecessors so much as provide a useful and important upgrade by broadening the scope and, at times, deepening the investigations.

李漪蓮撰寫的這部綜合史追溯了多個亞裔美國社區的經歷，從19世紀50年代加利福尼亞的中國勞工，到20世紀80年代明尼蘇達州的苗族難民。 李漪蓮是明尼蘇達州立大學歷史系教授，她廣泛運用了二手材料與原始材料去收集各種故事，最後收錄在書中。因此《亞裔美國人的故事》和其他詳實充分，內容廣泛的亞裔美國人歷史書有着很大相似之處，特別是高木羅納(Ronald Takaki)1989年的著作《異岸來的陌生人》(Strangers From a Different Shore)。和前人的著作相比，李漪蓮的書並沒有激進的偏離之處，只是拓寬了視界，有時也深化了調研，進一步提供了實用且重要的信息。

Case in point: One of her most fascinating chapters, “Border Crossings and Border Enforcement,” delves into the little-known but remarkable stories of how tens of thousands of Chinese and Japanese found ways into the United States despite being legally barred from immigrating. During what Lee calls an “exclusion era,” which began with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, intrepid emigrants would hide in rail cars crossing in from Canada and Mexico or stow away on boats from Cuba and Jamaica. Trafficking Asians into the United States became a lucrative, multiethnic affair for numerous Greek, Italian, indigenous Canadian and Mexican smugglers. Some went so far as to disguise their clients as other races to throw off border agents. Lee cites a 1904 Buffalo newspaper story on how traffickers along the Canadian border routinely disguised Chinese as Native Americans, “dressed in ‘Indian garb’ and carrying baskets of ”

舉例來說，“穿越邊界與邊界執法”是全書最精彩的篇章之一。這一章裏，她深入研究了數萬中國人與日本人如何千方百計，以違法的方式移民美國，這些故事鮮爲人知，但卻極爲重要。在李漪蓮看來，《1882年排華法案》標誌着“排外主義時代”的開始，而勇敢的移民會藏在火車車廂裏，從加拿大和墨西哥進入美國；或是躲在船裏，從古巴和牙買加進入美國。運送亞洲人進入美國成了涉及不同種族，利潤豐厚的買賣，不少希臘人、意大利人都參與進來、還有土生土長的加拿大人和墨西哥蛇頭。有些人甚至把自己的客戶僞裝成其他種族，騙過邊界崗哨。李漪蓮引用1904年巴法羅城報紙上的故事，一個加拿大邊境上的蛇頭經常把中國人僞裝成印第安人，“給他們穿上‘印第安服裝’，讓他們拿着裝滿樹皮的籃子。”

Importantly, Lee notes that as the “first immigrants to be excluded from the United States, Asians became the first undocumented immigrants”; as such, they were also the target of the first of many national panics around so-called illegal immigration. Government officials in the 1900s designated special deportation agents as “Chinese catchers,” while lawmakers in the 1920s bemoaned how even an imagined “Chinese wall” along the Mexico border would fail to “permit a permanent solution.” (The parallels between the anti-Asian immigration hysteria of yesteryear and the current climate facing Latino immigrants are both obvious and instructive.)

重要的是，李漪蓮指出，“第一代移民在美國遭到排斥的同時，亞洲人成了第一批無正式文件的移民”；當時美國國內有許多恐慌，首當其衝的就是所謂的非法移民，於是亞洲人也就成了衆矢之的。20世紀的第一個10年裏，政府官員們把驅逐非法移民出境的特工稱爲“中國捕手”。20年代的立法者們則哀嘆，就算在墨西哥邊境樹立一道“中國牆”，也不能“帶來永久的解決方案”（這和不久前反對亞洲移民的歇斯底里，以及當前拉丁美洲移民面對的環境顯然非常相似，頗爲發人深省）。

These border dramas serve as a reminder that the span of Asian-American history is really cleaved into two distinct parts, thanks to the exclusion era that deliberately barred specific Asian groups from the United States. Those pernicious immigration laws marked a nadir in domestic sentiment toward Asian-Americans, largely because of both nativist and white working-class agitation. It would take mounting international pressure in the 20th century to help reverse the tide, beginning with World War II and the need to enlist China in the war against Japan (all while Japanese-American citizens were being forced into internment camps). Then came the Cold War and “hot” conflicts in Korea and Southeast Asia, which created all manner of new Asian allies and enemies. Add in the momentum of the civil rights movement, and the turning point finally came with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

這些邊界上的戲劇性事件提醒人們，在那個排外的時代裏，有些特定的亞裔族羣被美國故意拒之門外，因此亞裔美國人的歷史其實可以分爲兩部分。那些引起巨大傷害的移民法，標誌着國內對亞裔美國人的感情降低到最低點，主要是因爲本土主義者和白人勞工階層的煽動。 20世紀不斷增長的國際壓力才扭轉了這股趨勢，先是“二戰”期間，需要讓中國在戰爭中對抗日本（與此同時，國內的日裔美國人則被送入拘留營）。其後，“冷戰”以及朝鮮和東南亞之間的“熱戰”造成了各種全新的亞洲盟友與敵人。再加上民權運動的影響，轉折點最終隨《1965年移民與國籍法》(Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965)的通過而到來。

That legislation ended what was effectively a 40-year moratorium on immigration dating back to the highly restrictive 1924 Immigration Act. It has since facilitated the legal entry of tens of millions of new immigrants, but even its most ardent backers comically underestimated the 1965 act’s potential. When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill into law, he declared that it repealed earlier policies that were “un-American in the highest sense,” but he also reassured the public that the bill “does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives.” Lee coolly retorts, “The president would be proven wrong,” and she argues that by producing “a racial restructuring of U.S. society, and every sector,” the 1965 act “changed the course of Asian-American and U.S. history.”

1924年的《移民法案》對移民做出了極大限制，相當於在實質上中止了移民行爲，1965年的法案結束了長達40年的這種狀況。自那以後，它幫助數千萬新移民合法地進入美國，但就連它最熱心的支持者也可笑地低估了它的潛力。簽署這項法案，使之成爲法律的林敦·B·約翰遜(Lyndon B. Johnson)總統宣佈，它否定了那些“在最高意義上違背美國精神”的早期政策，但也安撫公衆說，這項法案“不會影響到百萬公衆的生活。它不會重塑我們日常生活的結構。”李漪蓮冷酷地反駁道，“總統被證明是錯的，”她指出，1965年的法案“在美國社會乃至各個領域內實現種族重組”，從而“改變了亞裔美國人與美國曆史的進程。”

The act certainly changed the course of my own family’s history. Its provisions helped my parents gain permanent resident status after arriving from Taiwan as graduate students in 1968. That status allowed them to use the act’s “family reunification” preference to sponsor their siblings, who in turn could do the same for their families. I spent the 1980s growing up with a California coterie of second-generation kids of Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Indian descent; I came to think of us as “post-’65ers.” As a result, when I read the key Asian-American histories of Ronald Takaki and Sucheng Chan — a canon that I suspect Erika Lee will soon join — I marvel at their insights into pre-’65 Asian America, but I’ve never been as satisfied with their examinations of the community’s post-’65 transformations.

這項法案無疑改變了我的家族史。1968年，我的父母作爲臺灣的大學畢業生，根據該法案中的條款獲得美國的永久居民身份。而這個身份又讓他們可以根據法案中的“家庭團聚”優先權，擔保他們的兄弟姊妹來到美國，這些人又可以擔保其他的家族成員來美國。80年代，我在加利福尼亞，和不少中國、臺灣、韓國、越南與印度的第二代移民孩子一起長大，形成了一個小小團體；我覺得我們是“65後”的一代。所以，讀到高木羅納與陳素貞等人創作的重要亞裔美國人歷史時（我認爲李漪蓮的作品很快也會進入這些經典的行列），他們對1965年之前的亞裔美國人的深刻洞見固然令我激賞，但他們對1965年後社區變化的研究卻從未讓我滿意。

That’s not for any inherent scholarly shortcomings on their part, least of all in Lee’s robust work. Her post-’65 chapters chronicle the tremendous new diversity and complexities within a polyglot community made up of 24 distinct ethnic groups, with vast disparities in income and education among them. As someone who lives and teaches in Minnesota, Lee devotes a substantial chapter to the challenges facing Hmong refugees, tens of thousands of whom were resettled there by the American government after the end of the Vietnam War. She also discusses the importance of the Asian-American movement of the late 1960s and ’70s that produced the very concept of “Asian America,” and she ends the book by highlighting key examples of how contemporary Asian-Americans have mobilized themselves politically.

這並不是因爲他們的著作有什麼內在的學術缺陷，李漪蓮這部有力的著作中尤其沒有問題。這本書中，關於1965年後的篇章裏，她描寫了一個由24個不同族裔團體組成的多語言社區中，全新的、巨大的多樣化與複雜性，其中收入水平和教育水平也千差萬別。李漪蓮在明尼蘇達州生活和教學，她用一整章描寫那裏的苗族難民所面臨的挑戰——越南戰爭後，數萬名苗族難民被美國政府重新安置在那裏。她還討論了60年代末到70年代亞裔美國運動的重要性，正是它產生了“亞裔美國人”這個概念，本書最後，她特別舉了幾個當代亞裔美國人積極參與政治的關鍵例子。

Still, Lee’s overall history, like its predecessors, places a heavy emphasis on the external political and economic forces by which Asians have been welcomed in and warded off, recruited and excluded, labeled “good” and “bad.” These are sensible, necessary ways of explaining the making of Asian-Americans as both a racial and national community. But whenever these histories engage the post-’65 present, I find myself wanting to know more about the making of “Asian-American-ness,” i.e. the internal, intra-community ways we’ve defined our place, our worth, our identities and cultures.

和前輩們一樣，李漪蓮的綜合歷史極爲強調外部政治與經濟力量的作用，由於這些力量，亞洲人有時被歡迎，有時被排擠；有時被接納，有時被驅逐；有時被貼上“好”的標籤，有時被貼上“壞”的標籤。這些是合情合理，有必要的方式，可以解釋亞裔美國人作爲種族與民族社區是如何形成的。但是這些歷史一旦與1965年後的現實發生接觸，我就覺得還想知道更多關於“亞裔美國性”方面的東西，換言之，就是我們在社區內部如何定義自己的位置、自己的價值，自己的身份與文化。

Of course, the wry paradox is that the 1965 act made this work infinitely more difficult because this community is being continually transformed by new immigrants for whom “Asian America” has no meaning beyond a demographic check box. In that regard, the making of both Asian America and Asian-American-ness is constantly reset as well, creating new questions for historians in some indeterminate future to investigate.

當然，扭曲的悖論是，1965年的法案讓這項工作變得無比艱難，因爲這個社區還在持續受新移民影響而發生變化，對於這些新移民來說，人口統計表格上的複選框之上寫的“亞裔美國人”並沒有什麼特別的含義。因此，“亞裔美國人”與“亞裔美國性”都在不斷重新形成，不斷爲歷史學家們造成各種新問題，供他們在不確定的未來某時進行研究。