Asian Americans

Original writings address the struggles of young Asian Americans to define their identities while growing up in the United States

Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Landscapes of Difference -- 1 The New Gold Mountain -- 2 A Quality Education for Whom? -- 3 Mainstreaming the Asian Mall -- 4 That "Monster House" Is My Home -- 5 Charting New Suburban Storylines -- Afterword: Keeping the Dream Alive in Troubled Times -- Appendix: Methods for Revealing Hidden Suburban Narratives -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z

The fascinating story of the rise of Asian Americans as a politically and socially influential racial group This groundbreaking book is about the transformation of Asian Americans from a few small, disconnected, and largely invisible ethnic groups into a self-identified racial group that is influencing every aspect of American society. It explores the junctures that shocked Asian Americans into motion and shaped a new consciousness, including the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, by two white autoworkers who believed he was Japanese; the apartheid-like working conditions of Filipinos in the Alaska canneries; the boycott of Korean American greengrocers in Brooklyn; the Los Angeles riots; and the casting of non-Asians in the Broadway musical Miss Saigon. The book also examines the rampant stereotypes of Asian Americans. Helen Zia, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, was born in the 1950s when there were only 150,000 Chinese Americans in the entire country, and she writes as a personal witness to the dramatic changes involving Asian Americans. Written for both Asian Americans -- the fastest-growing population in the United States -- and non-Asians, Asian American Dreams argues that America can no longer afford to ignore these emergent, vital, and singular American people.

"In the past fifty years, Asian Americans have helped change the face of America and are now the fastest growing group in the United States. But as ... historian Erika Lee reminds us, Asian Americans also have deep roots in the country. The Making of Asian America tells the little-known history of Asian Americans and their role in American life, from the arrival of the first Asians in the Americas to the present-day. An epic history of global journeys and new beginnings, this book shows how generations of Asian immigrants and their American-born descendants have made and remade Asian American life in the United States: sailors who came on the first trans-Pacific ships in the 1500s to the Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Over the past fifty years, a new Asian America has emerged out of community activism and the arrival of new immigrants and refugees. No longer a "despised minority," Asian Americans are now held up as America's "model minorities" in ways that reveal the complicated role that race still plays in the United States. Published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the United States' Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that has remade our "nation of immigrants," this is a new and definitive history of Asian Americans. But more than that, it is a new way of understanding America itself, its complicated histories of race and immigration, and its place in the world today"--Jacket.

Asian American experiences in the various regions of the United States are compared and contrasted, with attention also given to class, gender, ethnicity, acculturation, perception of self, and generational problems.

In a series of essays based on original ethnographic research, Pyong Gap Min and his contributors examine the unique identity issues for second generation ethnic Asians, from Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Indian, and Vietnamese descent. They describe how societal expectations and structural barriers have a powerful influence on the formation of ethnic identities in a strongly racialized American society. Key factors discussed are the importance of culture and language retention, ethnic attachment, transnational ties, pan-Asian coalitions and friendships, social and geographic mobility, racial domination and racial awareness, life cycle changes, immigrant women's sexuality and gender traditionalism, deviant behavior, and educational and occupational achievement. This book will be a valuable resource in the study of Asian American culture, race, ethnicity and American society.

A comprehensive, compelling, and clearly written title that provides a rich examination of the history of Asians in the United States, covering well-established Asian American groups as well as emerging ones such as the Burmese, Bhutanese, and Tibetan American communities. History of Asian Americans: Exploring Diverse Roots supplies a concise, easy-to-use, yet comprehensive resource on Asian American history. Chronologically organized, it starts with Chinese immigration to the United States and concludes with coverage of the most recent Asian migrant populations, describing Asian American lives and experiences and documenting them as an essential part of the continuously evolving American experience and mosaic. The book discusses domestic as well as international influencing factors in Asian American history, thereby providing information within a transnational framework. An ideal resource for high school and undergraduate level students as well as general readers interested in learning about the history of Asian Americans, the chapters employ critical racialization and ethnic studies discourses that put Asian and Asian Americans subjects in an insightful comparative perspective. The book also specifically addresses the important roles played by Asian American women across history.

Across the Pacific explores in descriptive and critical ways how transnational relationships and interactions in Asian American communities are manifested, exemplified, and articulated within the international context of the Pacific Rim. In eight ground-breaking essays, contributors address new meanings and practices of Asian Americans in the global transformation of the post-Civil Rights, post-cold War, postmodern and postcolonial era.