In Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation critic David L. Eng and psychotherapist Shinhee Han draw on case histories from the mid-1990s to the present to explore the social and psychic predicaments of Asian American young adults from Generation X to Generation Y. Combining critical race theory with several strands of psychoanalytic thought, they develop the concepts of racial melancholia and racial dissociation to investigate changing processes of loss associated with immigration, displacement, diaspora, and assimilation. These case studies of first- and second-generation Asian Americans deal with a range of difficulties, from depression, suicide, and the politics of coming out to broader issues of the model minority stereotype, transnational adoption, parachute children, colorblind discourses in the United States, and the rise of Asia under globalization. Throughout, Eng and Han link psychoanalysis to larger structural and historical phenomena, illuminating how the study of psychic processes of individuals can inform investigations of race, sexuality, and immigration while creating a more sustained conversation about the social lives of Asian Americans and Asians in the diaspora.

Preface  vii
Introduction: The History of the (Racial) Subject and the Subject of (Racial) History  1
Part I: Racial Melancholia
1. Racial Melancholia: Model Minorities, Depression, and Suicide  33
2. Desegregating Love: Transnational Adoption, Racial Reparation, and Racial Transnational Objects  66
Part II. Racial Dissociation
3. Racial Dissociation: Parachute Children and Psychic Nowhere  101
4. (Gay) Panic Attack: Coming Out in a Colorblind Age  141
Epilogue  174
Notes  181
Bibliography  203
Index  213