Books in the Asian American Studies Today series

The sheer diversity of the Asian American populace makes them an ambiguous racial category. In Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture, Jennifer Ann Ho shines a light on the hybrid and indeterminate aspects of race, revealing ambiguity to be paramount to a more nuanced understanding both of race and of what it means to be Asian American.

Investigates the myriad ways that Asians throughout the Americas use language, literature, religion, commerce, and other cultural practices to establish a sense of community, commemorate their countries of origin, and anticipate the possibilities presented by life in a new land. This volume provides an illuminating portrait of how immigrants negotiate between their native and adopted cultures.

Explores how international migration re-shapes women's senses of themselves. Chien-Juh Gu uses life-history interviews and ethnographic observations to illustrate how immigration creates gendered work and family contexts for middle-class Taiwanese American women, who, in turn, negotiate and resist the social and psychological effects of the processes of immigration and settlement.

What happens when Japanese Americans, born and raised in the United States, are the ones living abroad in Japan? Redefining Japaneseness chronicles how Japanese American migrants to Japan navigate and complicate the categories of Japanese and "foreigner". Jane H. Yamashiro tracks the multiple ways these migrants strategically negotiate and interpret their daily interactions.

This book explores the impact of inconsistent rules of ethnic inclusion and exclusion on the economic and social lives of Korean Americans and Korean Chinese living in Seoul. Lee highlights the "logics of transnationalism" that shape the relationships between these return migrants and their employers, co-workers, friends, family, and the South Korean state.

The words "Asian American film" might evoke a painfully earnest, low-budget documentary or family drama, destined to be seen only in small film festivals or on PBS. In her groundbreaking study of the past fifty years of Asian American film and video, Jun Okada demonstrates that although this stereotype is not entirely unfounded, a remarkably diverse range of Asian American filmmaking has emerged.

Few studies have highlighted the stories of middle-class children of immigrants who move to their ancestral homelands. Chasing the American Dream in China addresses this gap by examining the lives of highly educated American-born Chinese professionals who 'return' to the People's Republic of China to build their careers.