Books in the Asian American History & Cultu series

Challenging the dominant view of Hawai'i as a "melting pot paradise" - a place of ethnic tolerance and equality - this title examines how ethnic inequality is structured and maintained in island society. It finds that ethnicity, not race or class, signifies difference for Hawai'i's people and therefore structures their social relations.

Shows how Filipino Americans counter exclusion by actively engaging in alternative practices of community building. This book presents an ethnographic study of Filipino American communities in Los Angeles and San Diego that presents a multi-disciplinary cultural analysis of the relationship between ethnic identity and social space.

Spotlighting Asian Americans on both sides of the motion picture camera, this book examines the aesthetics, material circumstances, and politics of a broad spectrum of films released in the last thirty years. It focuses in particular on the growing presence of Asian Americans as makers of independent films and cross-over successes.

Through innovative studies of community politics, gender, family and sexual relations, cultural events, and other sites central to the formation of ethnic and citizen identity, this title reconfigures ethnography according to Asian American experiences in the US. It includes 11 essays that consider traditional models for ethnographic research.

Confronting the cultural stereotypes that have been attached to Asian-Americans over the last 150 years, this title seizes the label "Oriental" and asks where it came from. It shows how the bewildering array of racialized images first proffered by music hall songsters and social commentators have evolved and become generalized to Asian-Americans.

Presents an account of how Chinese are being smuggled into the United States, and what happens to the people who risk their lives to reach Gold Mountain. This book shows how the problem of human smuggling will continue for as long as China's citizens are deprived of fundamental human rights and economic security.

A thorough examination of the diverse political styles of second and third generation Japanese Americans and their resonance within the changing racial dynamics and political complexities in the United States.

What does it mean to be queer and Asian-American at the turn of the century? This title considers how Asian-American racial identity and queer sexuality interconnect in mutually shaping and complicating ways. It gathers an array of voices and experiences that represent the communities of a queer Asian-America.

Tells us about the complex social and political issues depicted by Asian-American playwrights. In this title, the author argues that playwrights produce a different conception of "Asian-America" in accordance with their unique set of sensibilities.

Deals with the extent to which South Asian Americans are and ought to be included within Asian America as that term is applied to academic programs and admission policies; grassroots community organizing and politics more broadly; and, critical analyses of cultural products.

Gathers together eleven plays that speak in the "hybridized American voices of Asian descent - and often dissent." This book features plays that testify to the complexity of Asian-American experience while they also demonstrate the different styles and thematic concerns of the individual playwrights.

During the Second World War, Chinese Americans contributed to the war effort by joining the armed forces and working in the defense industries. This title traces the history of the 14th Air Service Group, a segregated outfit of Chinese Americans sent to China in support of the American Army Air Corps and the Chinese Air Force.

How race, gender, and sexuality were re-imagined in the interwar encounters of Asians and Americans

Filipino Americans are the second largest group of Asian Americans as well as the second largest immigrant group in the United States. This collection reflects on their lives, which represent the diversity of the immigrant experience and their narratives are a way to understand ethnic identity and Filipino American history.

Employs contemporary and traditional readings of representative works of prose, poetry, and drama to establish the ongoing significance of these works to the American literary canon.

Drawing on the cosmopolitan sensibility of scholars like Anthony Appiah, Vinay Dharwadker, Martha Nussbaum, Bruce Robbins, and Amartya Sen, this book argues that to read the body of South Asian American literature justly, one must engage with the urgencies of places as diverse as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Burma, Pakistan, and Trinidad.

Monterey Park, California, was dubbed by the media as the "First Suburban Chinatown." This book reports on how pervasive anti-Asian sentiment fueled a series of initiatives intended to strengthen "community control. It also explores how race and ethnicity issues are used as political organizing tools and weapons.

An introduction to the themes of a still-evolving American ethnic literature

A collection of essays that center on the formation of an ethnic identity among Chinese Americans during the period when immigration was halted. It emphasizes the attempts by immigrant Chinese to assert their intention of becoming Americans and to defend the few rights they had as resident aliens.

Defines and changes perceptions of ethnic identity. This book invokes gender, generation, class, religion, language, and the dramatic political changes of the 1940s in South Asia and the United States to show how individual and group perceptions of ethnic identity have changed among Punjabi Mexican Americans in rural California.

Based on more than a decade of research, this book charts the evolution of Sunset Park - with a densely concentrated working - poor and racially diverse immigrant population - from the late 1960s to its current status as one of New York City's most vibrant neighborhoods.

How the interests of Seattle and Japanese immigrants were linked in the processes of urban boosterism before World War II

A history and analysis of the Asian American Movement, this work traces to the late 1960s, the genesis of an Asian American identity, culture, and activism. It analyzes the Asian American women's movement, the alternative press, Asian American involvement in electoral politics.

Shows the complex relationship between Vietnamese in the diaspora and those back at the homeland.

Examines the ways in which the colonial history of the Philippines shaped Filipino American identity, culture, and community formation. This book shows how an understanding of this history provides a foundation for theoretical frameworks for Filipino American studies.

Examines a network of intellectuals who attempted to re-imagine and reshape the relationship between the U.S. and India.

Provides a savvy cultural, historical, and media-based analysis that shows how Fu Manchu's irrepressibility gives shape to - and reinforces - the persistent Yellow Peril myth.