This critical anthology draws on current theoretical movements to examine the breadth of Asian American literature from the earliest to the most recent writers. Covering fiction, essays, poetry, short stories, ethnography, and autobiography, Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature advances the development of a theoretically informed, historically and culturally specific methodology for studying this increasingly complex field. As the old paradigms of "cultural nationalism" have become inadequate, and new concepts and methodologies of a diasporic discourse are still in the making, this volume provides a theoretical and critical framework for rethinking issues raised by both old and new perspectives