Chinese American Culture in the Making: Perspectives and Reflections on Diasporic Folklore and Identity

Having conceptually accepted Asian Americans as being groups integral to the "folk groups" in American history, culture, and society, and thus their folklores being integral to American public life and folkloristics, we now need to study these distinctive folklores with relevant theories and methods. By looking at the folklore practices of the diverse Chinese American group, this article proposes some perspectives and concepts, with an emphasis on folkloric identity, in the hope that they will be useful in analyzing and interpreting diasporic folklore and identity in general.