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Spanning over 20 years of collaborative effort beginning in the early 1990s, Eng and Han's Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans provides a compelling analysis of the unique psychological experience of Asian Americans. In many ways, witnessing Eng and Han's work culminate in this book has a deeply personal meaning for me, serving as a form of parallel process to forming my own identity as both an Asian American and a clinical psychologist who was first inspired by their article, “A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia” (Eng & Hand, 2000). This article was a primary source for my doctoral dissertation analyzing the impact of media stereotypes on Asian American masculinity. To have the opportunity to come full circle from an aspiring student to having the privilege of reviewing their book is both an honor and a psychic homecoming.
Skillfully blending psychoanalysis and critical race theory, Eng and Han present multiple case histories across two generations, Generation X to Generation Y, to demonstrate the psychic mechanisms of racial melancholia and racial dissociation for which the book is named. Through this process, they explain the changes in demographics within the Asian American population, as well as the ways we toggle back and forth between the history of the racial subject and the subject of racial history.