Before moving to California, he was an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also served as Associate Director of the Center for Asian American Studies. His book, Urban Triage: Race and the Fictions of Multiculturalism, was published by the University of Minnesota Press in April 2004. He has also written for several journals and collections, including NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Literary Studies East and West, African American Writers, and The Blackwell Companion to the Regional Literatures of America. He is currently at work on a biography.