Asian migration to North America into Canada, the US, and the Caribbean has produced a variety of communities as Asian peoples have merged and exchanged with African, Indigenous, and European populations. This cultural and intimate convergence complicates how we understand the term“Asian American.”

How have sexual and racial difference been managed under different colonial and post-colonial states? How are Asian American experiences explored and claimed in literature and film by Asian and other writers and artists in the Americas? Three experts in comparative ethnic literature emerging from Canada, the US, and the Caribbean discuss how different forms of colonialism and racial formation complicate our understanding of race and sexuality and  “Asian American” when mapped from Canada to the Caribbean.