Telling the Right Story: Narrative as a Mechanism for Japanese American Ethnic Boundary Maintenance

Abstract

This study conceptualizes ethnic grand narrative, a comprehensive story of a people, as a mechanism for maintaining and policing ethnic community boundaries. Such symbolic boundaries are shaped through relational processes of negotiation and contestation: boundary work. Taking the case of Japanese Americans, I demonstrate that legitimate claim on community membership relies on more than common ancestry, as ethnicity usually implies. Through an examination of the newspaper discourse surrounding two Japanese American men, Scott Fujita and Lt. Ehren Watada, I find that the collective ethnic narrative serves to define ethnic community boundaries and is used as a reference point for individual narratives. Depending on the alignment between personal narratives and collective ethnic narratives, in terms of content and structure, determines an individual's legitimate claim on ethnic membership. Notwithstanding the continued value placed on perceived shared biological heritage, ethnic membership is better conceived of as a combination of both common ancestry and strong fit between personal and community narratives.