The trans-Pacific flow of Asian Americans and capital in Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s <i>Sister Swing</i>

Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s Sister Swing (2006) responds to the economic shift toward the Asia-Pacific and the trans-Pacific migration of the Asian “jet class” after the 1965 United States immigration reforms. This article examines the novel to analyse its negotiation of how economic capital endows Asian diasporic groups with transnational mobility and privileges while revealing its inherent limitations within American racialized social structure. The analysis focuses on the role of economic and racialized relations in the identity formation of Asian Americans, and examines the mutual permeability between Asian Americans and Asians. The article contends that through the metaphor of “wings” and a recurrent concern with Asian “roots”, Sister Swing reveals the diasporic transition “from necessity to extravagance”. The novel dramatizes an enduring tension between freedom and belonging which challenges monolithic narratives of the American Dream and homogeneous conceptions of Asian American identity that continue to resonate in contemporary transnational experience.