"No Place in Particular": Inhabiting Postinternment America, Articulating Postinternment Anxieties in John Okada's No-No Boy

Abstract

As a site of belonging forged out of various longings and affective investments, the postwar United States suburb signaled to returned internees and no-no boys an ambiguous narrative of historical amnesia and forgiveness. This article analyzes Ichiro's unresolved dilemma in No-No Boy in the context of the postinternment milieu of the 1950s. It argues that suburban fantasies reveal both the promises and limitations of Japanese Americans' surreptitious desires for belonging.