ancestry or the primal scene of immigration, strategically evoked and unfairly used,

nullify the existence in the here and now of people of Asian descent. In his novel No-No

Boy, Nisei (second generation Japanese-American) writer John Okada voices, through the

protagonist Ichiro's reflective comment, the sense of bewilderment and helplessness

Japanese-Americans felt as the massive trauma suddenly uprooted their life and

stigmatized them as enemy aliens: "It is not an easy thing to discover suddenly that being

American is a terribly incomplete thing if one's face is not white and one's parents are

Japanese. ... It is like being pulled asunder by a whirling tornado and one does not think

of a slide rule though that may be the thing which will save one."267

 The constant reminder of Asian "otherness" via repeated evocations of Asian

immigrants' previous provisional status as greenhorns operates to discipline and

subjugate both Asian-Americans and other minorities of color as docile subjects. The

practice of evoking the "other" origin of Asian immigrants has worked to consolidate the

existing hierarchical social order. In this connection, Ray Chow points out that admission

into a community means "to be recognized as having a similar kind of value as that which

is possessed by the admitting community," and that "there is admittance in the sense of

confession," which connotes "a surrender of oneself in reconciliation with the rules of

society."268

 A cursory review of the American history of immigration shows that the admission

of Asians to America has always been determined by the fluctuating interests of the

dominant majority group. Since the fabled gold rush and the massive initial influx of

Chinese immigrants that fueled San Francisco's explosive population and economic

growth in the 1850s and 1860s, cheap, non-unionized Asian labor was mobilized in many