[SOLVED] Asian American studies. – Humanities

VIEW: Lecture on Waves of MigrationREAD: 9. Espiritu, “Gender, Migration, and Work” 236-256READ: *Wang, K. Ours is a History of Resistanceand post a minimum 400-word discussion post.100 words response.WAVES OF ASIAN MIGRATION TO
THE UNITED STATES
CULTURAL ENERGIZER
➤
Think of who was the first person in your family to migrate to the
United States. It might even be yourself.
➤
In the beginning of your discussion post, introduce yourself and the
country of origin of the first person in your family to come to the
United States and what year they arrived. Include the city and/or
region/province of the country where that person is from, and what
was happening in the country at that time that caused this person
to leave and migrate to the U.S.
➤
When responding to another post, choose one whose first person in
their family to migrate to U.S. also comes from the same city and/
or region/province as the first person in your family to migrate. In
your response, discuss any similar experiences of migration.
IMMIGRATION MODEL: “LAND OF OPPORTUNITY”
➤
In this model, immigrants have been lured to the United
States by dreams of opportunity and prosperity. but many
scholars now believe that this explanation is too simplistic,
and that many factors influence people’s decisions to
immigrate to the United States.
IMMIGRATION MODEL: PUSH AND PULL
➤
Many scholars believe that immigrants are pushed from their
countries of origin by certain environments and events (i.e.
poverty and war) and pulled to another country because of
workforce needs.
➤
What “push” examples can you think of?
➤
What “pull” examples can you think of?
IMMIGRATION MODEL: CAPITALISM, INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, AND IMPERIALISM
➤
Other scholars, while acknowledging the previous two models,
put more emphasis on major global changes in politics and the
economy to explain the movement of peoples from one
country to another in the 19th and 20th centuries.
➤
In the early 19th century, major global economic and political
shifts caused by the growth of capitalism, the Industrial
Revolution, and imperialism disrupted local economies
worldwide.
➤
These dislocations, which include the extraction of resources
from countries and the need for cheap labor in capitalist
countries, have caused millions of people around the world to
migrate.
IMMIGRATION MODEL: INTERNATIONAL LABOR MIGRATION
➤
This model views immigration globally, and in light of
imperialism, the Industrial Revolution, and the growth of
capitalism in the 19th and 20th century. People were pushed
and pulled across the globe. The labor force moves from one
country to another as the influence of capitalism continues to
be felt worldwide. Globalization and its impact on
immigration and labor migration are central to this model.
WAVES OF MIGRATION: THE “OLD PERIOD” (1587-1942)
➤
First documented of Asian presence in what is now known as
the United States was in 1587 when Filipino crewmen on a
Spanish galleon off the coast of Morro Bay in California were
sent there on a scouting mission during the Manila-Acapulco
trade between Spain and China.
➤
Filipinos also landed in what is now known as Louisiana
when they jumped ship from the Spanish galleons in the
1700s.
WAVES OF MIGRATION: THE “OLD PERIOD” (1587-1942)
➤
The Chinese were the first major Asian immigrant group to
come to the United States in massive numbers.
➤
Many tried their luck at the Gold Rush of 1849 in California.
➤
By 1860s, the Chinese population grew tremendously as a
source of cheap labor in agriculture and railroad construction
for the rapidly industrializing United States.
➤
Eventually were feared by whites a “yellow peril,” for “taking
their jobs” by undercutting their wages
➤
Page Law of 1875 excluded Chinese women from migrating.
➤
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended immigration of
laborers from China.
WAVES OF MIGRATION: THE “OLD PERIOD” (1587-1942)
➤
The Japanese were the next Asian group to migrate in large numbers during this
time, also as a source of cheap labor in agriculture and other low wage jobs.
➤
Like the Chinese, they also faced intense hostility and discrimination.
➤
“Gentleman’s Agreement” of 1907 prohibited the Japanese from immigrating
to the United States, although Japanese already living in US were allowed to
bring their wives over. This led to “picture bride” migration between 1908 and
1920.
➤
California Alien Land Law of 1913 prohibited “aliens ineligible for citizenship”
from owning land, later extended to US-born children of immigrants.
➤
Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1942, and the US entry into World War II, led
to the prohibition of all Japanese from migrating to the US, and Japanese
Americans were then forced into internment camps.
➤
Ironically, German and Italian immigrants, though their home countries
were enemies of the US during World War II, were not mass incarcerated
like the Japanese immigrants.
WAVES OF MIGRATION: THE “OLD PERIOD” (1587-1942)
➤
Filipinos began to come in larger numbers, after the Chinese and Japanese,
as a new source of cheap labor in agriculture in the early 1900s.
➤
They also came as “pensionados,” university students mostly from the elite
class allowed to study in American universities to eventually return to the
Philippines to lead and govern it as a US colony.
➤
Like the Chinese and Japanese, Filipinos also faced intense hostility.
➤
White vigilante mobs would often attack them, and Filipinos were even
prohibited from marrying white women due to anti-miscegenation laws.
➤
Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 restricted the entry of Filipinos to 50 per
year, and the Philippines was promised independence in 10 years.
➤
Filipino Repatriation Act of 1935 invited Filipinos in the US to take allexpense paid trip back to the Philippines, on the condition that they
never return to the US.
WAVES OF MIGRATION: THE “OLD PERIOD” (1587-1942)
➤
In 1900 – 1910, thousands of Koreans were recruited to work
in Hawai’i’s plantations, and thousands of immigrants from
India came as agricultural workers in mainland US.
➤
Though smaller in number, Korean and Indian immigrant
workers also experienced hostility and discrimination.
➤
Immigration Act of 1910 initially barred Indian immigrants,
then later all Asians by means of an “Asiatic barred zone.”
WAVES OF MIGRATION: THE “OLD PERIOD” (1587-1942)
➤
Immigration Act of 1924, aka the Asian Exclusion Act,
introduced nation-origins quotas.
➤
favored immigrants from Western and Northern Europe,
but excluded Asian immigrants.
WAVES OF MIGRATION: THE “INTERMEDIATE PERIOD” (1943-1965)
➤
Asian migration to the US was largely impacted by World War
II during this period, especially for immigrants from Asian
countries who were considered US allies.
➤
War Brides Act of 1945 allowed US soldiers to bring their
alien wives and children to the US.
➤
Luce-Cellar Act of 1946 allowed quotas of immigrants from
Asian countries, reversing previous exclusions.
WAVES OF MIGRATION: THE “POST-1965 PERIOD”
•
Immigration Act of 1965
•
Abolished national-origin/racial quotas set in the 1924
Immigration Act
•
170,000 visas for Eastern Hemisphere
•
120,000 from Western Hemisphere
•
20,000 per country
•
Unlimited family reunification visas
The act had two goals:
1) facilitate family reunification
2) admit skilled workers needed by the U.S. economy
WAVES OF MIGRATION: THE “POST-1965 PERIOD”
Implementation-Seven Preferences
Nonquota: spouses, unmarried minor children, parents of U.S. citizens.
1. Unmarried children over 21
2. Spouses and unmarried children of permanent residents
3. Professionals, scientists and artists of exceptional ability
4. Married children over 21
5. Siblings and their spouses and children of US citizens
6. Workers in occupations with labor shortages
7. Political refugees (Eliminated in 1980, and became its own act called
the Refugee Act)
•
“This bill we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of
millions. It will not restructure the shape of our daily lives.” -President Johnson, 1965
IMPACT-DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES
• 1950s: 2.5 Million immigrants
•
1970s: 4.5 M
•
1990s: 10 M
•
Asians
•
–
.5% of US pop in 1965
–
2005: 4.3%
–
1970: 1 mil, 2000: 12.5 mil
Top Sending Countries: Mexico, Philippines, China,
Vietnam, India
IMPACT-ASIAN AMERICANS
Most Impactful Civil Rights Policy
•
Asian immigration took the United States by surprise!
–
Families moved to “make themselves whole”
–
Women joined their spouses
–
Workers in the secondary and primary labor markets
came for new opportunities
–
Asian Americans multiplied, most often in regions and
neighborhoods with the cultural and economic capacity
to absorb newcomers.
IMPACT OF THE ACT
In 1960:
1980:
➤ 21%
Chinese
➤ 20%
Filipino
➤
52% Japanese
➤
27% Chinese
➤ 15%
Japanese
➤
20% Filipino
➤ 12%
Vietnamese
➤ 11%
Korean
➤ 10%
Asian Indian
➤
➤
1% Korean
1% Asian Indian
➤ 4%
Laotian
➤ 3%
Cambodia
➤ 3%
“Other”
IMPACT-ASIAN AMERICAN CHANGES
•
Gender Ratio
•
Resettlement Patterns
•
Occupations (Occupational Downgrading)
•
Community Development
•
Chain Migration
•
Becoming Asian American
IMPACT OF 1965 IMMIGRATION ACT ON ASIA
What happened to Asian countries as a result of the
mass immigration to United States?
•
Brain Drain (Asian American Model Minority Myth)
•
Damaged Economies
•
Poverty
•
Overseas “Contract” Workers (Domestic and Service Work, Transnational
Caregiving, Human Trafficking)- Remittance-Based Economies
IMPACT ON OUR COMMUNITIES
•
•
Economic Hardships
–
Parents working multiple jobs for low pay
–
Family Consolidation-Consolidated Households
Generational Conflicts
–
Between Asian Parents and their American-born
Children
–
Between Immigrant vs. Americanized Identity Issues
(i.e. “FOB” vs. American-born
–
Education Issues
•
Immigration is a complicated thing, with multiple factors that
move people around the globe.
•
Immigrants are agents who make the best choices they are
able, within these personal, local, and global systems.
Pocket: Ours is a History of Resistance
12/22/18, 08(54
Ours is a History of Resistance
By Karin Wang, reappropriate.co
June 27th, 2018
Since we launched “Write Back, Fight Back” two months ago, we have witnessed the power
of words to name our struggles, reclaim our identities, and voice our power. We close out our
series by centering the story of Asian immigrants challenging racism through the courts and
in many cases, winning and changing the course of American history.
No current narrative of Asian Americans is more closely tied to white supremacy and
historic white nativist policies than the model minority myth. First coined and
promulgated in the mid-1960s by white Americans, the term referred to Japanese and
Chinese Americans, focusing obsessively on their seeming success in the face of
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discrimination. The model minority myth gets denounced on a regular basis lately,
and many journalists, writers, and activists have analyzed and challenged the
economic and class implications of the myth and the damage it does less privileged
Asian Americans and Paci!c Islanders.
But there’s another insidious side to the model minority myth that needs the same
unpacking and deconstructing: the narrative of the quiet and obedient Asian – the
one who works twice as hard and neither complains nor challenges authority. The
myth was born at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, deliberately juxtaposing
Asians against other racial minorities. It’s an image used not only to keep Asian
Americans in their place but one that upholds white supremacy.
Our real history as Asians in America de!es this false narrative. Asian American
resistance to racism dates back to at least the 1800s. Imported to the U.S. as cheap
labor to serve white economic interests in the “new world”, immigrants from China,
Japan, India, and the Philippines built the transcontinental railroad opening up the
western U.S., and worked sugar plantations and farms in Hawaii and on the Paci!c
Coast. Asian immigrants soon found themselves the target of hate violence and
virulent anti-immigrant and racist laws, including those that barred Asians from
accessing immigration and citizenship as well as that prohibited (explicitly or
implicitly) everything from land ownership to voting to public education to
interracial marriage. This would eventually culminate in the mass incarceration of
120,000 innocent individuals without due process.
Yet in the face of such hate, Asian immigrants did not meekly accept their fate.
Instead, a number of Asian immigrants looked prejudice in the eye and refused to
blink, challenging through the courts the laws they deemed unfair and unjust.
Although not always immediately or obviously successful and not necessarily a direct
attack on white supremacy per se, these cases were important in that they did
directly challenge the whites in social and political power at the time. Some cases
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went further, paving the way to eventually overturn discriminatory policies or even
leading to landmark decisions a”ecting not only Asians but other communities of
color.
Resisting the Chinese Exclusion Act and anti-Chinese discrimination
Starting in the late 1800s, Asians were banned for decades from entering the U.S. by
the Chinese Exclusion Act and other immigration laws. Chinese immigrants at the
time brought a number of legal cases including several that reached the U.S. Supreme
Court. Although they did not always succeed (e.g., many direct challenges to
exclusion such as Chae Chan Ping v. U.S. failed), these cases demonstrate that Chinese
immigrants of the late 1800s and early 1900s did not passively accept the Exclusion
Act and related discriminatory laws. And although the Exclusion Act itself was not
repealed until the mid-1900s, some early cases did have a lasting impact in
establishing legal protections for non-citizens in the U.S. For example, Yick Wo v.
Hopkins (1886) established that the 14th Amendment applied to Chinese immigrants,
and Wing Wong v. U.S. (1896) determined that the same constitutional protections
extend to non-citizens as citizens in criminal cases.
Rede!ning U.S. citizenship
From the nation’s founding through the 1950s, the United States limited citizenship
— and its many privileges such as voting and land ownership — to “free white
persons”. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, in addition to banning new immigrants,
also explicitly barred Chinese immigrants already in the U.S. from becoming U.S.
citizens.
A number of Asian immigrants challenged these laws. The most important case was
brought by Wong Kim Ark, who was born in the U.S. but, after a trip to China, was
denied re-entry to the United States on the grounds that the son of a Chinese national
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could never be a U.S. citizen. Wong disagreed – and sued the federal government,
resulting in the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1898 decision de!ning “birthright
citizenship” – that children born in the United States, even to parents not eligible to
become citizens, were nonetheless citizens themselves under the 14th Amendment of
the U.S. Constitution. Wong successfully challenged a law designed to preserve white
supremacy, and in doing so, he shaped the uniquely diverse character of our nation,
by giving root to countless immigrant communities from all races and nationalities.
Other Asian immigrants also sought U.S. citizenship by challenging the de!nition of
“free white person”. In back-to-back cases that reached the U.S. Supreme Court in the
early 1920s, a Japanese immigrant (Takao Ozawa v. U.S.) and an Indian immigrant (U.S.
v. Bhagat Singh Thind) respectively argued that they should be allowed to naturalize as
a “free white person”. The Supreme Court ruled against both men, holding fast to the
de!nition of “white” as both Caucasian and light-skinned (thus excluding Mr. Thind,
whom the Court acknowledged was literally Caucasian by virtue of his birth in the
Caucasus mountains, if not for the purposes of US citizenship), but their cases laid
the groundwork for the eventual elimination in 1952 of the racial requirement to
naturalize.
Challenging anti-miscegenation laws
Most anti-miscegenation laws at the turn of the 20th century blocked interracial
marriages between whites and African Americans, but marriage between whites and
Asians (“Mongolians” and “Malays,” at the time) was also barred, starting in states
with signi!cant Asian populations such as California and Washington but expanding
to 15 states across the country by 1950.
In one California case, a Filipino man argued that as a “Malay” and not a
“Mongolian”, the state law barring marriage between whites and Mongolians did not
apply to him. The court agreed, but not surprisingly the state immediately amended
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the statute to explicitly bar “Malays” as well, preserving the white supremacy that
gave rise to anti-miscegenation laws in the !rst place. But the !ght against antimiscegenation was a matter of survival in that era. Asian men comprised the vast
majority of the low-wage laborers brought from Asia to the U.S. during this time, and
with Asian women largely barred from legally entering the country, Asian men
pushed back against anti-miscegenation restrictions as they sought to build families
and communities.
Fighting for access to education
Although new immigrants were barred by the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, by that
time cities like San Francisco had developed a small Chinese community, despite
virulently anti-Chinese political leadership. In 1884, a Chinese immigrant mother
tried to enroll her daughter, Mamie Tape, in the neighborhood elementary school,
but the little girl was denied entry. The family sued, alleging violations of state and
federal law. The California Supreme Court agreed with the Tapes, giving Chinese
immigrants a right to public education in California, although it was a “#awed
victory” in that racist education and political leaders created segregated schools for
Chinese children that lasted for decades.
Nearly 100 years later, the San Francisco school system was desegregated by court
order, and Chinese immigrant families fought a new legal battle over public
education. After desegregation, thousands of Chinese immigrant students not #uent
in English found themselves shut out of a meaningful education because the school
district failed to provide them appropriate assistance, and instead placed some
students in special education classes while forcing others to repeat the same grade for
years. The families of Kinney Kinmon Lau and other Chinese students !led a civil
rights lawsuit against the San Francisco school district. In 1974, the U.S. Supreme
Court held in Lau v. Nichols that the school district had violated the Civil Rights Act of
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1964. The Lau decision had a signi!cant legacy, both in shaping bilingual education in
the U.S. for many years as well as clarifying that disparate impact discrimination
(discriminatory in impact) violated the Civil Rights Act.
Challenging constitutionality of “Japanese American internment”
Perhaps the best-known, explicitly anti-Asian act by the U.S. government was the
mass incarceration during World War II of 120,000 Japanese Americans, mostly U.S.
citizens. A number of Japanese Americans – notably Minoru Yasui, Gordon
Hirabayshi, Mitsuye Endo, and Fred Korematsu – challenged the incarceration as
unconstitutional. Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against them at the time,
individual convictions against HIrabayshi and Korematsu were later thrown out in
the 1980s. While the Supreme Court has not yet explicitly overruled the broad power
of the federal government during times of war, the legal challenges by Yasui,
Hirabyashi, Endo, and Korematsu have led over time to acknowledgment by the
federal government that it committed a grave civil liberties error in imprisoning
Japanese Americans en masse and these cases continue to have deep implications
today during an era of rampant pro!ling of Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim and South
Asian communities.
***
Ours is a history of resistance, and we can learn from earlier Asian Americans who
de!antly “rocked the boat” and succeeded against all odds. But we must also deepen
the battle we as Asian Americans wage against those that hold political and social
power in this country.
As we face a current administration that prizes blind obedience to those in power and
embraces white nativism, we must not only !ght back against racism that impacts our
communities, we must !ght the battles that loom ahead — over family immigration,
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border enforcement, a$rmative action — with a goal of dismantling the very white
supremacy that drives those policies in the !rst place.
Karin Wang
Karin Wang is a Los Angeles-based advocate for a more just and equitable world. She is the
new Executive Director of the public interest law program at UCLA School of Law.
Previously, she served for more than 15 years as Vice President of Programs and
Communications at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles, where she worked on
immigrant rights, language rights, racial justice, and LGBTQ equity issues.
Write Back, Fight Back(#WriteBackFightBack) is a weekly essay series sponsored
by 18MillionRising, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, and Reappropriate. It features
emerging Asian American writers on topics of racial and social justice. This is the !nal essay
of the series.
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Page 8 of 8
Copyright © 2016. New York University Press. All rights reserved.
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/fullerton/detail.action?docID=4045264.
Created from fullerton on 2020-09-06 14:40:19.
Copyright © 2016. New York University Press. All rights reserved.
Contemporary Asian America
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Contemporary Asian America
A Multidisciplinary Reader
Third Edition
Copyright © 2016. New York University Press. All rights reserved.
Edited by Min Zhou and Anthony C. Ocampo
New York Universit y Press
New York and London
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/fullerton/detail.action?docID=4045264.
Created from fullerton on 2020-09-06 14:40:19.
NEW YORK UNIVERSIT Y PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
Copyright © 2016. New York University Press. All rights reserved.
© 2016 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor
New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Zhou, Min, 1956– editor. | Ocampo, Anthony Christian, 1981– editor.
Title: Contemporary Asian America : a multidisciplinary reader /
edited by Min Zhou and Anthony C. Ocampo.
Description: Third edition. | New York : New York University Press, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015043568| ISBN 9781479829231 (cl : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781479826223 (pb : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Asian Americans. | Asian Americans—Study and teaching.
Classification: LCC E184.O6 C66 2016 | DDC 973/.0495—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015043568
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to
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Also available as an ebook
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/fullerton/detail.action?docID=4045264.
Created from fullerton on 2020-09-06 14:40:19.
From Min Zhou: For Philip Jia Guo and Lisa Phuong Mai, the children of
Asian immigrants
From Anthony C. Ocampo: For my parents Myrtle and Chito Ocampo,
Copyright © 2016. New York University Press. All rights reserved.
immigrants from the Philippines
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/fullerton/detail.action?docID=4045264.
Created from fullerton on 2020-09-06 14:40:19.
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Contents
List of Tables and Figures
xi
Preface to the Third Edition
xiii
Preface to the Second Edition
xvii
Preface to the First Edition
xxiii
Introduction: Revisiting Contemporary Asian America
1
Min Zhou, Anthony C. Ocampo, and J. V. Gatewood
Part I. Claiming Visibility: The Asian American Movement
1. “On Strike!” San Francisco State College Strike, 1968–1969:
The Role of Asian American Students
25
Karen Umemoto
2. The “Four Prisons” and the Movements of Liberation:
Asian American Activism from the 1960s to the 1990s
60
Glenn Omatsu
Study Questions
96
Suggested Readings
96
Films
97
Copyright © 2016. New York University Press. All rights reserved.
Part II. Traversing Borders: Contemporary Asian
Immigration to the United States
3. Contemporary Asian America: Immigration, Demographic
Transformation, and Ethnic Formation
101
Min Zhou, Anthony C. Ocampo, and J. V. Gatewood
4. The Waves of War: Refugees, Immigrants, and New Americans
from Southeast Asia
129
Carl L. Bankston III and Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo
Study Questions
152
Suggested Readings
152
Films
153
vii
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/fullerton/detail.action?docID=4045264.
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viii
| Contents
Part III. Ties That Bind: The Immigrant Family and the
Ethnic Community
5. New Household Forms, Old Family Values: The Formation and
Reproduction of the Filipino Transnational Family in Los Angeles
157
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas
6. The Reorganization of Hmong American Families in
Response to Poverty
175
Yang Sao Xiong
7. Enclaves, Ethnoburbs, and New Patterns of Settlement among
Asian Immigrants
193
Wei Li, Emily Skop, and Wan Yu
Study Questions
212
Suggested Readings
212
Films
213
Part IV. Struggling to Get Ahead: Economy and Work
8. Just Getting a Job Is Not Enough: How Indian Americans Navigate
the Workplace
217
Pawan Dhingra
9. Gender, Migration, and Work: Filipina Health Care Professionals
to the United States
236
Yen Le Espiritu
10. The Making and Transnationalization of an Ethnic Niche:
Vietnamese Manicurists
257
Copyright © 2016. New York University Press. All rights reserved.
Susan Eckstein and Thanh-Nghi Nguyen
Study Questions
286
Suggested Readings
286
Films
287
Part V. Sexuality in Asian America
11. “Tomboys” and “Baklas”: Experiences of Lesbian and Gay
Filipino Americans
291
Kevin L. Nadal and Melissa J. H. Corpus
12. No Fats, Femmes, or Asians: The Utility of Critical Race Theory in
Examining the Role of Gay Stock Stories in the Marginalization
of Gay Asian Men
312
C. Winter Han
Study Questions
329
Suggested Readings
329
Films
330
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Contents
| ix
Part VI. Race and Asian American Identity
13. Are Asians Black? The Asian American Civil Rights Agenda and the
Contemporary Significance of the Paradigm
333
Janine Young Kim
14. Are Second-Generation Filipinos “Becoming” Asian American
or Latino? Historical Colonialism, Culture, and Panethnicity
358
Anthony C. Ocampo
15. Are Asian Americans Becoming White?
378
Min Zhou
Study Questions
385
Suggested Readings
386
Films
387
Part VII. Intermarriages and Multiracial Ethnicity
16. Are We “Postracial”? Intermarriage, Multiracial Identification, and
Changing Color Lines
391
Jennifer Lee and Frank D. Bean
17. Mapping Multiple Histories of Korean American
Transnational Adoption
404
Kim Park Nelson
Study Questions
428
Suggested Readings
428
Films
429
Copyright © 2016. New York University Press. All rights reserved.
Part VIII. Confronting Adversity: Racism, Stereotyping,
and Exclusion
18. A Letter to My Sister and a Twenty-Five-Year Anniversary
433
Lisa Park
19. “Racial Profiling” in the War on Terror: Cultural Citizenship and
South Asian Muslim Youth in the United States
444
Sunaina Maira
20. Racial Microaggressions and the Asian American Experience
464
Derald Wing Sue, Jennifer Bucceri, Annie I. Lin, Kevin L. Nadal,
and Gina C. Torino
Study Questions
485
Suggested Readings
485
Films
486
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
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x
| Contents
Part IX. Behind the Model Minority
21. Jeremy Lin’s Model Minority Problem
491
Maxwell Leung
22. Continuing Significance of the Model Minority Myth:
The Second Generation
497
Lisa Sun-Hee Park
23. Racial Anxieties, Uncertainties, and Misinformation: A Complex
Picture of Asian Americans and Selective College Admissions
508
OiYan Poon and Ester Sihite
Study Questions
526
Suggested Readings
526
Films
528
Part X. Multiplicity and Interracial Politics
24. Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian
American Differences
531
Lisa Lowe
25. Critical Thoughts on Asian American Assimilation in the
Whitening Literature
554
Nadia Y. Kim
26. Beyond the Perpetual Foreigner and Model Minority Stereotypes:
A Critical Examination of How Asian Americans Are Framed
576
Jennifer Ng, Yoon Pak, and Xavier Hernandez
27. Race-Based Considerations and the Obama Vote: Evidence from
the 2008 National Asian American Survey
600
Copyright © 2016. New York University Press. All rights reserved.
S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, Janelle Wong, Taeku Lee, and Jane Junn
Study Questions
623
Suggested Readings
623
Films
625
About the Contributors
627
Index
631
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
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List of Tables and Figures
Tables
Table 3.1. Asian American Population, 1980–2000 (Thousands) 109
Table 3.2. Top Ten Metro Areas with Largest Asian American
Population, 2010 111
Table 3.3. Largest Asian American Population Growth, by Region and State,
2000–2010 111
Table 4.1. Socioeconomic and Family Characteristics of the US Population and
of Major Southeast Asian Groups in the United States, 2010–2012 143
Table 6.1. Poverty Rate of Select Racial/Ethnic Categories, 1989–1999
180
Table 6.2. Population of Hmong Alone by Select US States, 1990–2010 183
Table 6.3. Average Household and Family Size by US General and US Hmong
Populations 184
Table 6.4. Proportion in Poverty by US and Hmong Family Type,
2005–2010 188
Table 7.1. Asian Americans in the United States and Top Ten States,
1990–2010 198
Copyright © 2016. New York University Press. All rights reserved.
Table 7.2. Metropolitan Areas with Largest Asian American
Populations, 2010 199
Table 7.3. Metropolitan Areas with Asian American Population at Least One
Percent of National Total 200
Table 10.1. Top Ten Countries of Origin of Foreign-Born Hairdresser and
Grooming Service Workers in the United States in 2000 263
Table 10.2. Percentage of Nail Technicians in the United States of Diverse
Ethnicities, 1999–2009 264
Table 10.3. Vietnamese Manicurists by Year of Arrival (%), in 2007
Table 11.1. Domains and Themes
264
297
Table 14.1. Everyday Words in English, Spanish, and Tagalog
362
Table 14.2. Panethnic Identification of Respondents (N = 50) 371
Table 14.3. Panethnic Identification by Ethnicity, Second-Generation Asians (N
= 1,617) 372
xi
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xii
| List of Tables and Figures
Table 14.4. Panethnic Identification by Ethnicity, Second-Generation Asians (N
= 921) 372
Table 16.1. Rates of Exogamy among Marriages Containing at Least One
Member of the Racial/Ethnic Group 392
Table 16.2. Multiracial Identification by Census Racial Categories 395
Table 16.3. Most and Least Multiracial States
398
Table 27.1. Asian American Vote Choice in the 2008 Primaries, among
Registered Voters 608
Table 27.2. Asian American Vote Choice in the 2008 General Election, among
Registered Voters, by Month of Interview 609
Table 27.3. Asian American Vote Choice in the 2008 General Election, among
Registered Voters, by Primary Vote Choice 610
Table 27.4. Group Distance and the Black-Latino Divide among Asian
American Registered Voters 610
Table 27.A.1. Asian American Vote Choice in the 2008 General Election,
among Registered Voters, by Ethnicity 615
Table 27.A.2. Logit Regressions of Vote Choice in the 2008 Primary and
General Election 615
Table 27.A.3. Ordered Logit Regression of Intended Vote Choice in the 2008
General Election 617
Figures
Copyright © 2016. New York University Press. All rights reserved.
Figure 3.1. Percentage Distribution of Asian American Population,
1900–2010 107
Figure 3.2. Asian American Population: Percentage Foreign-Born,
1900–2010 109
Figure 4.1. Major Southeast Asian Populations in the United States,
1920–2013 132
Figure 7.1. Detailed Asian Groups by Foreign-Born, Second Generation, and
Third and Later Generations 197
Figure 7.2. Chinatown in San Francisco
204
Figure 10.1. Number of Nail Salons in the United States, 1991–2008 262
Figure 10.2. Nail and Beauty Salon Share of Total Revenue in the Beauty Sector,
1999–2007 262
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
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Preface to the Third Edition
There was a time, not too long ago, when race in America was synonymous with
the black-white dichotomy. But since the United States reformed its immigration
policy and reopened its borders to newcomers, immigrants and their children
have transformed the racial landscape of this country. In the past decade or so
alone, the immigrant population has grown tremendously, from thirty million at the turn of the twenty-first century to over forty million today. The Pew
Research Center’s comprehensive study of Asian Americans, titled “The Rise of
Asian Americans,” surprised many by pointing out that Asian Americans, not
Latinos, constituted the fastest growing racial group, and much of the growth
is due to international migration. More than a third (36 percent) of the new
immigrants who came to this country in 2010 were of Asian American or Pacific
Islander descent, compared to 31 percent of Latino origin.
Over the past half century, Asian Americans grew from fewer than one million (or 0.6 percent of the total US population) in 1960 to more than nineteen
million (or 6 percent of the US population) in 2013.1 Although Asian Americans
compose a tiny proportion of the US population, they form an increasingly visible racial minority group. Many Americans assume that Asian Americans congregate along the coastal states of the Pacific West, but in fact their numbers have
increased most rapidly in new destinations of the US South, a region considered
to be the “geographic center of black-white relations.”2 Asian Americans have
now complicated Americans’ notions of race. By virtue of their presence all over
the country, it is now impossible for nineteen million people of Asian origins to
remain unseen.
As the contributors of the following chapters demonstrate, Asian Americans have carved out niches and made themselves visible within many arenas
of American life—schools and colleges, community-based organizations, suburbs and ethnoburbs, neighborhoods and “gayborhoods,” political movements,
and even professional sports leagues. Asian American immigrants and their
children work in every echelon of the mainstream and ethnic labor markets—
professional occupations, service sectors, hospitality industries, and health care
and medicine—and have achieved measureable positive socioeconomic outcomes. Unlike the European and Asian immigrants of yesteryear, they excel in
the education arena and fare well in American society on economic terms. They
also have more resources and technology to intimately and economically tether
themselves to the home countries they left behind. The emerging popularity of
xiii
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xiv
| Preface to the Third Edition
social media has helped democratize American pop culture, and Asian Americans have used the Internet to raise social consciousness (e.g., 18millionrising.
com, Hyphen magazine), blog about Asian American racial injustices (e.g.,
Angry Asian Man), and build a fan base for their music and comedy (e.g., The
Fung Brothers of Monterey Park, CA). Historically touted as “forever foreigners,” Asian Americans throughout the United States are weaving themselves
into the tapestry of American society and continue to be lauded as “the model
minority.”
Yet despite significant advances in social mobility, Asian Americans have yet
to achieve a social status in the United States that is on par with that of their
European counterparts of yesteryear. In spite of the widespread popularity of
the “model minority” trope, there are Asian Americans who are poor and struggle to make ends meet, who barely make it into community colleges because
of both academic and financial challenges, who live in the shadows because of
their legal status, and who continue to be subject to overt and covert forms of
racial discrimination on a daily basis. No matter what their levels of cultural
and economic assimilation, they are still considered the racial other because of
their phenotype, even those who are adopted by and raised in white families and
communities for their entire lives. They continue to face a bamboo ceiling that
blocks their mobility to leadership positions. Their representation in upper-level
management in corporations, college and university administrations, Hollywood
televisions and films, and even the US Congress remains negligible. Despite the
fact that American society is more open than ever before, and an Asian American basketball player in the NBA has evolved into a national news sensation,
Asian America is still on the margin of mainstream America. As French writer
Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr famously declared, “The more things change, the
more they stay the same.”
Even the Pew Research Center report about the “rise” of Asian Americans
was rife with controversy. To the credit of the organization, they consulted with
several of the leading Asian American social scientists in the country; however,
it was their reporting of the data that brought tremendous angst to Asian American leaders around the country. At its heart, the report seemed celebratory in
nature—in total congruence with the model minority stereotype. In opting to
highlight the successes, the report marginalized the segments of the community that were most in need. For every Asian American success story, there are
many more Asian American families and communities who continue to suffer through the indignant effects of racism, sexism, homophobia, violence, and
poverty. Given the scarcity of think tanks that address Asian American issues,
the Pew Research Center report was a missed opportunity. In the eyes of many
Asian American activists, scholars, and policymakers, they were “blindsided” by
a one-dimensional depiction of what they know—and have proven with their
life’s work—to be a culturally and socioeconomically heterogeneous population.3
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
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Preface to the Third Edition
| xv
Like the Asian American population in the United States, Contemporary
Asian America continues to evolve. We have enlisted an interdisciplinary group
of sociologists, political scientists, psychologists, and ethnic studies scholars to
contribute to this third edition new chapters that underscore the growing complexity of Asian American communities and social issues. Some of the chapters
tackle new frontiers in Asian American studies. How is Latino immigration
reshaping how Asian Americans think about race? How have gay Asian Americans carved out their agency in a time when LGBT individuals have reached
unprecedented levels of acceptance? How has the age of Obama reshaped the
political behaviors of Asian Americans? Other chapters address issues that Asian
Americans continue to endure. How does race affect the everyday experiences
of Asian American students and workers? What strategies do Asian Americans
use to maintain their cultural and social ties to their home country? How do
the historical, economic, and political relations of the United States across the
Pacific affect Asian Americans’ experiences in this country today? These are
complicated questions, to which our book does not propose to provide a solution. Nonetheless, this third edition does hope to inspire a new generation of
students—Asian American or not—to critically consider these issues, rather than
reduce a population of nineteen million rising to mere Orientalist stereotypes.
As the coeditors, we are incredibly thankful to New York University Press
(NYUP), who not only provided the initial spark to develop this reader into the
new edition, but, as a publisher, has also made itself an important ally to the
growing field of Asian American studies. We are grateful for their continued
willingness to provide an important space for contemporary Asian American
issues to be debated in a critical fashion. NYUP editor Jennifer Hammer has
offered her unending support and enthusiasm for this project, as she did in the
previous editions. We thank Eric Zinner for playing a key role in providing this
important scholarly space for Asian American studies. We also thank Constance
Grady and Dorothea Stillman Halliday, who have patiently guided us through
the necessary steps in the publishing process, and Joseph Dahm, who is our
meticulous copy editor.
We are grateful for our contributors, both old and new, who have not only
helped make Contemporary Asian America a repository of the multifaceted
experiences of Asian Americans, but also given us an important set of tools for
understanding the current state and the future of this ever-evolving community.
Their brilliant chapters shed new light on the history and current state of Asian
America and inspire scholars and students of Asian American studies. When it
comes to this extraordinary group of passionate scholars, “the past isn’t dead; it’s
not even past,” to invoke the words of the American writer William Faulkner.
This volume would not have been possible without the support of our past and
present home institutions. We would like to express our gratitude for the institutional and funding support we have received from the School of Humanities
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
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xvi
| Preface to the Third Edition
Copyright © 2016. New York University Press. All rights reserved.
and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore; the
Department of Sociology, Asian American Studies Department, Asian American
Studies Center, and the fund from Walter and Shirley Wang Endowed Chair in
US-China Relations and Communications at the University of California, Los
Angeles; the Department of Psychology and Sociology at Cal Poly Pomona. We
thank our home institutions for continuing to believe in the field of Asian American studies.
Finally, we would like to thank our wonderful colleagues, research assistants,
students, friends, and family. Min would like to thank her colleagues and students in the Department of Asian American Studies at UCLA who have helped
nurture her Asian American sensitivity and inspire her research in the field.
Anthony would like to thank his colleagues at Cal Poly Pomona, the National
Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, the Association of Asian American Studies, and the community of immigration, race, and gender scholars
within the American Sociological Association, for their support. We thank our
incredibly hardworking research assistants—Jin Lou, Jingyi Wen, and Hao Zhou
from NTU and Audrey E. Aday, Sarine Aratoon, Irisa Charles, Joseph Cipriano,
Jessica Galvan, and Milio Medina from Cal Poly Pomona. We appreciate the
help from Antonio Ocampo for proofreading the manuscript. Min dedicates this
book to her son Philip Jia Guo and daughter-in-law Lisa Phuong Mai. Anthony
thanks his brothers and sisters from the UCLA sociology PhD program; his
dearest friends both in and out of academia (especially Daniel Soodjinda and
Elmer Manlongat); and his partner Joseph Cipriano. He dedicates this book to
his mother and father, Maria Myrtle and Antonio “Chito” Ocampo, whose own
migration story inspired him to pursue this profession.
Min Zhou, Singapore
Anthony C. Ocampo, Los Angeles
May 23, 2015
Notes
1 Pew Research Center, “U.S. Hispanic and Asian Populations Growing, but for Different
Reasons,” http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/26/u-s-hispanic-and-asianpopulations-growing-but-for-different-reasons/ (accessed May 23, 2015).
2 Monica McDermott, Working Class White: The Making and Unmaking of Race Relations
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 1.
3 Karthick Ramakrishnan, “When Words Fail: Careful Framing Needed in Research on Asian
Americans,” Hyphen Magazine, June 27, 2012, http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/blog/
archive/2012/06/when-words-fail-careful-framing-needed-research-asian-americans
(accessed January 31, 2015).
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Preface to the Second Edition
It was no small coincidence that the US population hit the three-hundredmillion mark just as we were putting the finishing touches on the second edition
of Contemporary Asian America in October 2006. For most Americans, this
unique historical moment was fairly anticlimactic. There were no visible signs
of celebration—no parades with colorful floats and marching bands, no fireworks, not even a public gathering. President Bush—a politician who has an
unusual way of speaking to the moment—delivered what can only be described
as a tepid response to the demographic change. In a press release issued by the
White House, the president lauded that people were “America’s greatest asset,”
and praised the American people for their confidence, ingenuity, hopes and for
their love of freedom. He concluded that “we welcome this milestone as further
proof that the American Dream remains as bright and hopeful as ever.”1 This
brief blip in the news cycle disappeared almost as suddenly as it came. To be certain, any celebrations that might have occurred were dampened by an ongoing
debate in the United States about immigration and it impact on the environment, natural resources, public services, and quality of life.
By contrast, the arrival of the two-hundred-millionth American in November
1967 was a more splendid affair, marked by celebrations and extensive news coverage. Addressing the nation while standing before a giant census clock, President Lyndon Johnson delivered his own message of hope and caution for the
future. As Haya El Nasser recounts, President Johnson’s words were broken on
several occasions by the sounds of applause from the crowd of onlookers who
had converged on the Department of Commerce to hear the president speak.2
Among the many events that celebrated the two-hundred-million mark was a
contest of sorts, sponsored by Life magazine. The editors at Life sent teams of
photographers to twenty-two cities across the United States, finding the baby
who arrived closest to the hour appointed by the US Census Bureau when the
two-hundred-millionth American would arrive. The winning baby was a fourthgeneration Chinese American, Robert Ken Woo, Jr., born at Atlanta’s Crawford
Long Hospital at 11:03 am, November 20, 1967, to Robert and Sally Woo. Woo’s
story was—to paraphrase the writer Gish Gen—“typically Asian American.”
Bobby’s great-grandfather had come to Georgia after the Civil War to work on
the Augusta Canal. His mother’s family had fled the Communist Revolution in
China and settled in Augusta in 1959 after several years of waiting for permission to emigrate. Both of parents were college graduates; his father worked as a
xvii
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xviii |
Preface to the Second Edition
certified public accountant in Georgia. Bobby Woo was one of a small number
of Asian Americans growing up in the suburb of Tucker. He attended Harvard
University as an undergraduate and as a law student. Today, he is a practicing
attorney (and the first Asian American partner at King & Spalding, one of the
most prestigious law firms in America), an advocate for immigrant rights, and
the father of three children.
Woo’s story is both fascinating and symbolically appropriate. Even though
it was by happenstance, Woo’s selection as the two-hundred-millionth American anticipated drastic changes that had altered the country’s demographic,
social, and political landscape since his ancestors first arrived in America
nearly a hundred years before his birth. Woo’s parents and Woo himself were
beneficiaries of the growing educational and economic opportunities that
were made available to them and other racial/ethnic minorities only within a
relatively short span of time—the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943,
the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (also known as the McCarranWalter Act), the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and subsequent changes in public
policies and public attitudes toward racial/ethnic minorities as a result of the
civil rights movement. The passage of the 1965 amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act (Hart-Celler Act), two years before Woo’s birth, made
possible the coming of hundreds and thousands of immigrants from all over
the world, especially from countries in Asia and Latin America that had legally
been excluded. Consequently, the face of America has changed dramatically.
Asian Americans, barely visible on the American scene in the 1960s, have
experienced unparallel growth, largely through immigration, from 1.5 million
in 1970 to 14.3 million as of today.
At a time when the United States is now the third most populous country on
earth after China and India, one wonders what the future of Asian America will
look like. With the exception of Woo’s story, Asian Americans and their contributions to American life were hardly mentioned by the American public either
at the two-hundred-million celebration in November 1967 or at the quiet passing
of the three-hundred-million milestone during the third week of October 2006.
This absence is a glaring one. Since the arrival of the first immigrants from Asia
in the mid-nineteenth century, Asian Americans have played and will continue
to play a critical role in this country’s future. Their American stories need to be
unfolded further and understood deeper. The second edition of Contemporary
Asian America: A Multidisciplinary Reader grows out of this urgent need. We
have thus worked assiduously to compile a new reader that delves into contemporary Asian America in its fullness and complexity; to assemble a selection of
readings and documentary films that offer an excellent grounding for understanding many of the emerging trends, issues, and debates in the community
and in Asian American studies; and to organize topics that lend insight into the
future of this ethnically diverse Asian American community.
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
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Preface to the Second Edition
| xix
Listening to students, instructors, researchers, and others who have used the
first edition of our reader for their studies, teaching, and research, we aimed to
make the second edition of Contemporary Asian America more user-friendly
by reducing its size and revamping it with the best and most up-to-date works
that reflect contributions—and changes—that have occurred within the field of
Asian American studies since 2000. Our goal proved challenging: How do you
reduce the number of articles and yet retain the breath and depth? How do you
retain the “classic” works most utilized by survey courses in Asian American
studies and at the same time introduce new topics, concepts, and perspectives
that are sensitive to the changing terrains of contemporary Asian America and
essential for the continual development of Asian American studies today? We
have addressed these questions rather substantively through a reconfiguration
of certain sections from the original volume and the incorporation of original
and recently published works that concern twenty-first-century Asian America,
including the impact of September 11 on Asian American identity, citizenship,
and civil liberties; globalization as a dynamic force shaping the contemporary
Asian American community; theoretical debates that continue to inform Asian
American studies; and an emphasis on diversity of Asian American experiences
along lines of class, ethnicity, nativity, gender, and sexuality. Of particular importance to the new edition is the movement away from nation-centered models of
identity formation (a core component of Asian American studies as it existed in
the 1960s through the 1990s) to a model governed by fluidity, cosmopolitanism,
and flexible identities rooted in global citizenship.
Of course, our interpretation of Asian American studies is just an interpretation, and perhaps a limited one at that. While no reader can be all things to all
people, this new edition strives to achieve a balanced coverage with the range
and depth that reflects our commitment to multiple interpretations of the Asian
American experience(s) and the shared vision of the many possibilities and
promises that is one of the defining features of Asian American studies. Along
the way, we ask more questions than we answer, offering what we hope will be
the framework for a larger discussion within and beyond the classroom. We
believe that this second edition has met our intended goals. It also meets the
growing expectations of our users. Instructors who have used the original edition of Contemporary Asian America should be able to comfortably adopt this
new edition whether they choose to teach their courses the same way or differently. Those who have not used Contemporary Asian America before may now
consider adopting it as it will surely stimulate much intellectual and personally
reflexive discussion in classrooms.
We, as coeditors, are appreciative for the encouragement and support of so
many individuals who made the original edition of Contemporary Asian America a great success and this second edition a real possibility. First and foremost,
we thank our editor, Jennifer Hammer, at New York University Press (NYUP).
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
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| Preface to the Second Edition
Hammer has been a champion of this edition. Her enthusiasm, encouragement,
and editorial insight have made this project as intellectually challenging as fun.
We thank Eric Zinner, the editor-in-chief at NYUP, for his steadfast support and
for his vision of the possibilities of Asian American studies. We also thank our
copy editor, Emily Wright, for her careful reading and meticulous editing of the
entire manuscript. We are especially grateful to NYUP’s anonymous reviewers
who offered additional suggestions after carefully reading our second edition
prospectus.
We are much indebted to many of our colleagues, friends, and students, who
offered invaluable feedback, insightful comments, and thoughtful ideas, and
copious suggestions for our second edition based on their own research and
classroom experiences using the original edition of Contemporary Asian America. Among these are Christina Chin, Meera Deo, Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, Russell
Leong, Valerie Matsumoto, Don Nakanishi, Kyeyoung Park, and Nancy Yuen at
the University of California, Los Angeles; Robert Lee, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo, and Karen Inouye at Brown University; Carl L. Bankston
III, Yen Le Espiritu, Demetrius Eudell, Matt Guterl, Christopher Lee, Lynn Mie
Itagaki, Elaine Kim, Susan S. Kim, Jennifer Lee, Sunaina Maira, Edward Melillo,
Gary Okihiro, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Edward Park, John Park, Paul Spickcard
and his students, Leti Volpp, Ellen Wu, and Judy Wu at other institutions. We
are extremely fortunate to work with our authors whose contributions were
absolutely first-rate and whose cooperation was incredibly generous and timely.
We thank Jason Gonzales, Ly P. Lam, Jesse Lewis, Ravi Shivanna, Tritia Soto,
and Yang Sao Xiong who provided tremendous technical support and research
assistance.
We would like to acknowledge the institutional support from the Department
of Sociology, Department of Asian American Studies, and Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, and the Department of American Civilization and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in the Americas at Brown University. The
Asian American Studies Center, the Social Sciences Division of the College of
Letters and Sciences, and the Academic Senate at UCLA provided partial funding for the project. The Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences
awarded a fellowship to Min Zhou during the academic year 2005–2006, which
freed up much time for her to concentrate on developing this project.
Last—but certainly not least—we thank our wonderful families who continue
to inspire us and our endeavors. Min Zhou dedicates this book to her husband
Sam Nan Guo and son Philip Jia Guo. Jim Gatewood dedicates this book to his
wife, Jules, to his mum, June Gatewood, and to his pugs, Boo and Moses.
Min Zhou and J. V. Gatewood
Los Angeles, October 2006
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Preface to the Second Edition
| xxi
Notes
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1 Office of the Press Secretary, “Statement by the President on U.S. Reaching 300 Million
Population Milestone” (News release, October 17, 2006), http://georgewbush-whitehouse.
archives.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061017–8.html (accessed September 12, 2015).
2 Haya El Nasser, “Little Fanfare Expected to Mark Population Milestone,” USA Today,
October 13, 2006, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006–10–12-populationmilestone_x.htm (accessed September 12, 2015).
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
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Preface to the First Edition
The purpose of this anthology is to provide undergraduate and graduate students and all those interested in the Asian American community with some of
the most central readings informing Asian America and Asian American studies today. Of critical importance in selecting the readings is our goal of making
the entire project a reflexive undertaking. The readings, while important in and
of themselves to the evolution of Asian American studies and the development
of the community, have been selected upon the basis of what they can tell our
readers about themselves or their own lives and, essentially, about the ways in
which our readers’ experiences may resonate the larger framework of what we
call “Asian American experience.”
We feel that it is important at the outset to state the limitations of an anthology such as this one. No one reader can capture the diversity of voices, experiences, and people that constitute different Asian American communities today.
In privileging one topic of discussion, we must necessarily exclude another. It
would be disingenuous for us to state otherwise. One of the most noticeable
absences readily apparent to students and teachers is that of literary works produced by Asian American authors—the novels, short stories, poetry, plays. These
literary works have played a fundamental role in defining both the curriculum
in Asian American studies and in providing a valuable window through which
to evaluate identity formation within the community itself. Our decision not
to include literary works as such is not by happenstance. Initially, we agreed to
include these works, but found it extremely difficult to devise ways to excerpt
pieces without losing sight of their original meaning and context. It is disingenuous to the writers of these literary works to break apart chapters in their
books or even short stories in a selection that cannot be fully understood when
isolated from its other parts. We feel that most of the excellent literary works that
exist in Asian American studies should be read and experienced in their entirety.
Another reason underlying our motivations is that this anthology is meant to
accompany a college-level introductory course in Asian American studies. It has
been our experience from teaching Asian American studies courses that many
classes have almost always included a number of monographs and novels by
Asian American authors that frame the discussion of certain historical, cultural,
and social themes in the community. We thus decided to provide a focus that
frames these discussions in a social science context.
xxiii
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xxiv | Preface to the First Edition
Although there are a number of anthologies in the past that have focused
on Asian American immigration, community development, and socialization,
there are none that really attempt to integrate the intersection of these themes
and their effects on the contemporary Asian American community. The basis on
which each section of this anthology is devised has come about through our own
introspection into those issues that students find meaningful in Asian American
studies classes today. The issue of identity is a central concept in these classes,
and we have made a conscious effort to include various abstractions of Asian
American identity—abstractions that deal with the intersections between generation, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and the cultural reconstruction of identity. The sections are not meant to read as merely chronological, but rather as
different themes framing the reflexive bent that we assume. To compromise on
spatial limitations, we have also include in each section’s suggested reading list a
number of excellent works that have emerged in recent years as well as some of
the “classic” readings in Asian American studies.
A project of this scope is never a solitary undertaking. We gratefully acknowledge the support and assistance of all those individuals who offered their precious time and invaluable help in shaping this anthology and making it better.
First, we would like to thank Tim Bartlett, former editor at NYU Press, who initiated the project and pushed it through with his keen foresight and enthusiasm.
Jennifer Hammer, our current editor at NYU Press, has graciously offered her
unlimited support for this project as well as her own commitment to its underlying goals, which greatly facilitated our ability to make this project happen. We
would also like to acknowledge the four anonymous reviewers who at an early
stage read carefully and critiqued the works we originally selected and the manner in which we organized this reader. Their critical comments greatly strengthened the theoretical framework that we ultimately employed for the reader.
This project was partially supported by a research grant from the Asian American Studies Center at University of California, Los Angeles. We are particularly
indebted to the Center Director, Don Nakanishi, who has always been committed to supporting faculty and students in teaching and research. We would
like to thank our colleagues in both the Department of Sociology and Asian
American Studies Center at UCLA for their insightful ideas, helpful comments,
constructive critiques, and moral support; particularly we thank Shirley Hune,
Yuji Ichioka, Jennifer Lee, Russell Leong, David Lopez, Valerie Matsumoto, Bob
Nakamura, Don Nakanishi, Glenn Omatsu, Roger Waldinger, and Henry Yu.
At other academic institutions, we specially thank Carlos Chan, Carla Tengan,
and Horacio Chiong. We also thank our colleagues at the Japanese American
National Museum for their support, specially Karin Higa, Darcie Iki, Sojin Kim,
Eiichiro Azuma, Karen Ishizuka, Cameron Trowbridge, Debbie Henderson,
Nikki Chang, Grace Murakami. A special thanks goes to Krissy Kim for her
friendship and encouragement. We send a special note of appreciation to all the
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, edited by Min Zhou, and Anthony C. Ocampo, New York University Press,
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Preface to the First Edition
|
xxv
students in Asian American studies, among them Teresa Ejanda, Lakandiwa M.
de Leon, Derek Mateo, Randall Park, Steven Wong, and many others, with whom
we have worked and who gave us the incentive to compile this anthology. Diana
Lee provided tremendous research and editorial assistance for this project.
Finally, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to our families who
sacrificed a considerable amount of time with us to enable us to see this project
through to completion.
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Min Zhou
James V. Gatewood
Los Angeles, April 1999
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Introduction
Revisiting Contemporary Asian America
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Min Zhou, Anthony C. Ocampo, and J. V. Gatewood
As the new millennium unfolds, one cannot help but to notice dramatic changes
that have transformed contemporary Asian America. Most significantly, the
rapid pace of globalization and September 11 have altered the contours of our
national identity while creating new challenges for Asian Americans. What
is the current state of Asian America in the twenty-first century? How has it
evolved and developed since the 1960s, a turbulent decade in America’s history
that witnessed the birth of the nation’s ethnic consciousness movements? How
have Americans of Asian ancestries constructed ethnic and national identities,
and how has identity formation changed over time? To what extent has the Asian
American community asserted itself socially and politically in American society?
How are Asian Americans related to other racial/ethnic groups in the United
States and to the people in their ancestral homelands and in other parts of the
world? These are but a few of the questions posed by this anthology, an introductory reader for those interested in the urgent issues facing contemporary Asian
America. We have selected a number of themes that critically inform the current
state of the community. This anthology is meant to be personally meaningful
to our readers, and to incorporate ideas that expose Americans to the struggles
and triumphs of a racial minority group, to the evolution of Asian American
studies, and to the broader social transformations in American society that have
historically affected, and continue to affect, people of Asian ancestries and their
communities.
Activism, the Movement, and the Development of Asian
American Studies
For Asian Americans, these struggles profoundly changed our communities.
They spawned numerous grassroots organizations. They created an extensive
network of student organizations and Asian American studies classes. They recovered buried cultural traditions as well as produced a new generation of writers, poets, and artists. But most importantly, the struggles deeply affected Asian
American consciousness. They redefined racial and ethnic identity, promoted
1
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| Min Zhou, Anthony C. Ocampo, and J. V. Gatewood
new ways of thinking about communities, and challenged prevailing notions of
power and authority.
—Glenn Omatsu (this volume)
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The Legacy of Political Activism
The birth of the Asian American movement coincided with the largest student
strike in the nation’s history. At San Francisco State College, members of the
Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), a coalition of African Americans, Latino
Americans/Chicanos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans, launched a student strike in November 1968. The organizers made demands on the university
for curricular reform, initially aimed at three specific goals. First, student strikers sought to redefine education and to make their curriculum at once more
meaningful to their own lives, experiences, and histories and more reflective of
the communities in which they lived. Second, they demanded that racial/ethnic minorities play a more active role in the decision-making process and that
university administrators institute an admissions policy to give racial/ethnic
minorities equal access to advanced education. Third, they attempted to effect
larger change in the institutional practices by urging administrators to institutionalize ethnic studies at San Francisco State College. The strike, in which
Asian Americans played an integral role, brought about significant institutional
changes; in particular, it led to the establishment of the nation’s first School of
Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State College. More than just a token concession
to the students, the School of Ethnic Studies began to implement the students’
objectives of curricular reform and equal access to education.
In his seminal article, “The ‘Four Prisons’ and the Movements of Liberation”
(this volume), Glenn Omatsu, a veteran activist of the movement, contends that
the San Francisco student strike not only marked the beginning of the Asian
American movement but also set the agenda for the articulation of an Asian
American “consciousness.” Omatsu argues that those involved in the movement
were not simply seeking to promote their own legitimacy or representation in
mainstream society. Rather, the movement raised questions about subverting
ideals and practices that rewarded racial or ethnic minorities for conforming to
white mainstream values. The active involvement of Asian Americans extended
well beyond college campuses on which many of these issues were being raised;
it reached the working-class communities from which many students originated.
Omatsu highlights several emerging themes that exerted a profound impact on
the Asian American struggles in the 1970s: (1) building a coalition between activists and the community, (2) reclaiming the heritage of resistance, (3) forming a
new ideology that manifested in self-determination and the legitimization of
oppositional practices as a means of bringing about change to the racist structures inherent to American society, (4) demanding equal rights and minority
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Introduction
| 3
power, and (5) urging mass mobilization and militant action. For Omatsu, the
Asian American movement was a grassroots working-class community struggle
for liberation and self-determination.
The political activism of the 1960s unleashed shock waves that have continued to reverberate in the larger Asian American community today. As both
Karen Umemoto and Glenn Omatsu recount in their pieces on the movement
(this volume), the spirit that initially infused the period carried over into the next
two decades, despite a changing political climate that marked the onset of what
Omatsu (this volume) deems the winter of civil rights and the rise of neoconservatism. The movement has evolved to incorporate a broader range of diverse viewpoints and voices, helping frame the way in which many students approach Asian
American studies today. Not only does the movement provide students with an
understanding of the strategies employed by racial and ethnic minorities in their
fight against racism and oppression in American society, it also suggests specific
ways in which these strategies can be effectively used for minority empowerment.
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Institutional Development
Shortly after the founding of the first ethnic studies program at San Francisco
State College in 1968, other universities across the United States set to work on
developing their own academic programs. According to a survey conducted by
Don Nakanishi and Russell Leong in 1978, at least fourteen universities established Asian American Studies programs, including the Berkeley, Los Angeles,
Davis, and Santa Barbara campuses of the University of California; the San Francisco, Fresno, San Jose, Sacramento, and Long Beach campuses of the California
State University; the University of Southern California; the University of Washington; the University of Colorado; the University of Hawaii; and City College
of New York. The programs at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University
had the largest enrollments, with fifteen hundred each, and offered sixty and
forty-nine courses, respectively. The programs on other campuses offered four
to sixty courses per academic year and enrolled one hundred to six hundred fifty
students. All Asian American Studies programs, with the exception of UCLA’s,
listed teaching as their top priority, with community work and research ranked
as second and third priorities. UCLA, in contrast, made research and publications as its primary goal, with teaching ranked second. By 1978, at least three
universities, UCLA, San Francisco State University, and the University of Washington, offered graduate courses (Nakanishi and Leong 1978).
Since the movement of the later 1960s, Asian American studies has experienced unparalleled growth as Asian American student enrollment has increased
at unprecedented rates at American universities. Today, Asian Americans
account for 6 percent of the US population, but Asian American students are disproportionately overrepresented in prestigious public and private universities. In
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4
| Min Zhou, Anthony C. Ocampo, and J. V. Gatewood
1995, for example, Asian American students represented more than 10 percent of
the student populations at all nine UC campuses and at twelve of the twenty CSU
campuses, as well as at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Columbia, and other top-ranked universities. These regional and national enrollment trends have continued to grow
with no signs of slowing down since the mid-1990s. The UC system, in particular, has seen its Asian American populations grow rapidly. For example, Asian
Americans compose roughly 13 percent of California’s population but make up
more than one-third of the undergraduates enrolled in fall 2014 at the University
of California system-wide, with 34 percent at Los Angeles, 39 percent at Berkeley,
Davis, and Riverside, 44 percent at Irvine, and 45 percent at San Diego.1 The
nation’s leading universities have also reported a dramatic increase in enrollment
of Asian Americans, who made up 24 percent of the undergraduates at MIT, 20
percent at Stanford, 19 percent at Harvard, and 16 percent at Yale.2 About 26 percent of Asian Americans are US-born, and nearly 50 percent of US-born Asian
Americans aged twenty-five or older have at least a bachelor’s degree—a rate
more than 20 percentage points higher than that for average Americans (Pew
Research Center 2012).
In response to these demographic changes, major public universities and a
growing number of private universities in which Asian American student enrollments are disproportionately large have established Asian American studies
departments or interdepartmental programs. Today, all the University of California and the California State University campuses have established Asian American studies programs, some of which have evolved into Asian American studies
departments. Outside California, many universities and colleges have established
similar programs, often in response to student protests, even hunger strikes, and
pure enrollment numbers (Monaghan 1999). The current directory of the Association for Asian American Studies, complied at Cornell University, shows an
incomplete count of thirty-two Asian American studies departments and interdepartmental programs, twenty Asian American studies programs within social
sciences or humanities departments, and eighteen other universities and colleges that offer Asian American studies courses. These departments and interdepartmental or interdisciplinary programs offer a wide range of courses on the
diversity of Asian American experiences and greatly enrich academic curricula
on college campuses.3
Despite the current boom, however, institutional development has often
met with obstacles, ranging from the loss of faculty and staff positions to the
retirement of veteran or founding faculty to budget cuts arbitrarily imposed on
relatively young but growing departments. Although continued expansion of
programs and departments is not inevitable, and likely to be a matter of ongoing conflict, demographic pressures, the political weight of the Asian American
community, and the continuing intellectual development of Asian American
studies as a field make the prospects for growth very promising.
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Introduction
| 5
Asian American Studies as an Interdisciplinary Field
What is Asian American studies? Is it an academic field with its own unique
perspective and with intellectually cohesive themes, or is it a field that brings
together people of different disciplines who share common interests and who
work on similar topics? According to the Association for Asian American
Studies,
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Asian American Studies examines, through multidisciplinary lenses, the experiences of Asians in the United States. It is a field of study, creative and critical,
interpretive and analytical, grounded in experience and theory. It is located in the
academy and therewith shares some of the assumptions and values of intellectual
production and pedagogy, but it is also rooted in the extra-academic community
and therewith shares some of the assumptions and values of the prevailing and
contested social and cultural relations. Its subject matter is the diverse (but united
by “racial” construction, historical experience, political ends) peoples from Asia—
from West to East Asia, South to Southeast Asia—who live(d) and work(ed) in the
U.S. But its subject matter is also comparative and expansive, inclusive of America’s
Africans, Europeans, Latinos, and native peoples, and its geographic range is transnational, extending beyond the borders of the U.S.4
At the early stage of its development, Asian American studies understood itself
as the offspring of the social movement from which it emerged. Thus, in its
self-conceptualization, Asian American studies sought to reproduce central
aspects of the broader movement for social change in which it started out as
an oppositional orientation, preoccupied with refuting the prevailing theoretical paradigm of assimilation and fostering self-determination through a
Third World consciousness (Nakanishi and Leong 1978; Omatsu, this volume;
Umemoto, this volume). Both curricular development and research in the field
focused on history, identity, and community (Tachiki et al. 1971). Meanwhile,
Asian American studies explicitly served as an institutionalized training center for future community leaders, trying to connect scholars and students with
grassroots working-class communities. Since the students and Asian American
faculty of the 1960s and 1970s were mostly Japanese Americans and Chinese
Americans, with a smaller number of Filipino Americans, most of the teaching
and research focused on these ethnic populations.
Of course, the guiding theoretical principles and self-understanding of the
founders, themselves still present and influential in the field, cannot be accepted
without question. The founders’ views carry the characteristic traces of the baby
boom generation of which the founders are a part: namely, the sense of constituting a unique group whose actions mark a rupture with the past. Indeed,
in the late 1960s and the 1970s, both the Asian American movement and the
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6 |
Min Zhou, Anthony C. Ocampo, and J. V. Gatewood
academic field were intent on distancing themselves from the traditional academic disciplines and the more established, or “assimilated,” components of the
Asian American community. For example, the ethnic consciousness movements
of the 1960s fundamentally changed how historians and other social scientists
interpreted Asian American history. The pre-movement historiography of the
wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans tended to interpret this experience as a grave national mistake, but one that had been corrected by the postwar
acceptance of Japanese Americans into American society. The movement challenged this established interpretation and influenced Japanese Americans and
others to reexamine the internment experience within the context of the ongoing
debate over past and present racism in American society. Although redress was
successfully obtained, the issue of Japanese American internment continues to
be linked with contemporary issues of racial justice.5
In retrospect, it is clear that contemporary Asian American studies stands in
continuity with earlier attempts by Asian American intellectuals, within and outside the academy, to rethink their own experience and to link it to the broader
sweep of American history. The connection is most evident in sociology: Paul
Siu, Rose Hum Lee, and Frank Miyamoto, members of an older cohort, and
Tamotsu Shibutani, Harry Kitano, James Sakoda, Eugene Uyeki, Netsuko Nishi,
John Kitsuse, and many others, members of a younger cohort, have all made
important contributions to the study of Asian America, as well as to broader
areas in sociology. To the extent that Asian American studies involves activities
that derive from an attempt at self-understanding, one also needs to point out
the crucial literary, autobiographical, and polemical works of an earlier period:
we note the writings of Jade Snow Wong, Monica Sone, Carlos Bulosan, Louis
Chu, and John Okada, among others, a corpus that has now become the subject
of considerable academic work within Asian American studies. Also noticeable
is a small group of Euro-American researchers who work within the mainstream
disciplines, but without the assimilatory, condescending assumptions that mar
earlier work and who made significant contributions to the study of Asian
America prior to the advent of the movement, providing notice to the disciplines
that this was a topic worthy of their attention. The historians Alexander Saxton,
Roger Daniels, and John Modell and the sociologist Stanford Lyman deserve
particular mention.
In its recent iteration, Asian American studies is facing a new reality that
is at odds with the Asian American community of the 1960s and 1970s. Asian
American scholars have keenly observed several significant trends that have
transformed Asian America, with attendant effects on Asian American studies
within the academy: an unparalleled demographic transformation from relative homogeneity to increased diversity; an overall political shift from progressive goals of making societal changes toward more individualistic orientations
of occupational achievements; unprecedented rates of socioeconomic mobility
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Introduction
| 7
and residential de-segregation of native-born generations; and a greater separation between academia and the community (Fong 1998; Hirabayashi 1995; Kang
1998; Wat 1998). These trends mirror the broader structural changes that have
occurred in American society since the late 1970s, which we shall discuss in
greater detail shortly, and create both opportunities and challenges for the field.
To a large extent, Asian American studies has been energized by the interdisciplinary dynamism that exists not only in history, literature and literary works,
and cultural studies, but also in anthropology, sociology, psychology, education,
political science, social welfare, and public policy. The field has traditionally
been guided by varying theoretical concerns—Marxism, internal colonialism,
racial formation, postmodernism, and postcolonialism, among others—and
has widened its purview of topics and subject matters. Interdisciplinary course
offerings and research have touched on the daily experiences of the internally
diverse ethnic populations: course subjects range from the histories and experiences of specific national origin groups to Asian American literature, film and
art, and religion, as well as special topics such as gender studies, gay and lesbian
studies, immigration, and health. The field has also expanded into comparative
areas of racial and ethnic relations in America, diasporic experiences (including undocumented immigration), transnational communities, and the interconnectedness of Asians and Asian Americans, while maintaining a community
focus through extensive internship and leadership development programs.
These interdisciplinary and comparative approaches allow Asian American
scholars and students to get beyond the simple assumption that, because people
look similar, they must also share the same experiences, values, and beliefs.
Asian American studies has also injected historical and ethnic sensibility into
various academic disciplines and prevented itself from being trapped as an isolated elective subdiscipline.
On the academic front, however, there has been a debate over the relationship between theory and practice. Michael Omi and Dana Takagi voice a central
concern over the lack of a sustained and coherent radical theory of social transformation, arguing that this absence may lead to a retreat to “more mainstream,
discipline-based paradigmatic orientations.” These scholars see the “professionalization” of the field at universities, the demands of tenure and promotion for
faculty, and new faculty’s lack of exposure to and experience of the movement of
the earlier period as the main contributing factors to this trend of retreat. They
suggest that the field should be “transdisciplinary” rather than “interdisciplinary” and that it should be revisited, rethought, and redefined according to three
main themes—the scope and domain of theory, the definition of core theoretical
problems and issues, and the significance of Asian American studies as a political project (Omi and Takagi 1995).
Meanwhile, some scholars and students express concern that Asian American studies is being diverted from its original mission of activism, oppositional
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8
| Min Zhou, Anthony C. Ocampo, and J. V. Gatewood
ideology, and community-oriented practices (Endo and Wei 1988; Hirabayashi
1995; Kiang 1995; Loo and Mar 1985–1986). As the field gains legitimacy at universities, it is increasingly uprooted from the community. Although students have
continued to involve themselves in community affairs, their activities tend to
be framed in terms of service provision, since the social infrastructure in many
Asian American communities is always almost in need of volunteers, as one
might expect. But volunteering is all too often a part-time event, in which students may pass through the community and then ultimately maintain a distance
from it. Lane Ryo Hirabayashi (1995) points out that the divergence goes beyond
the institutional “reward structure” that prioritizes theoretical contributions over
applied research. He alludes to the problems of essentialized notions of race and
ethnicity, the presumed unity of the community, and the impacts of poststructural and postmodern critiques aiming at deconstructing academic dominance.
He believes that these concerns can be effectively addressed by redefining the
community as a multidimensional entity with ongoing internal class, generational, political, gender, and sexual divisions, reconceptualizing Asian American
communities as a dynamic social construct, and incorporating new theories and
methodologies into community-based research. Kent A. Ono points out that the
risk of dissociation from community struggles is of particularly critical concern,
because September 11 has fundamentally redefined race in America (Ono 2005).
He argues that, in the post-9/11 context, Asian American studies must reconfigure itself to become more conversant about the connections with Arab and Arab
American communities, Muslim communities, and other marginalized cultural
communities.
Finding a common ground from which to approach issues in Asian American studies is a challenging task. Many scholars have made concerted efforts to
develop alternative paradigms and perspectives to deal with issues confronting
a new Asian America that has become more dynamic and diverse. For example, Lisa Lowe (this volume) reconceptualizes contemporary Asian America
in terms of heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity to capture the material
contradictions among Asian Americans. L. Ling-chi Wang (1995) proposes a
dual-domination model for understanding Asian American experiences that
takes into account the diplomatic relations between the United States and Asian
countries and the extraterritorial interaction between Asian American communities and their respective homelands. Sau-Ling C. Wong (1995) uses the
term “denationalization” to address transnational concerns that have emerged
from the intrinsic relations between Asia and Asian America. Sylvia Yanagisako (1995) advances the idea of contextualizing meanings, social relations, and
social action and of liberalizing the confines of social borders that cut across
nation, gender, ethnicity, kinship, and social class in Asian American history.
Shirley Hune (2000) calls for the rethinking of race. She suggests that theoretical paradigms be shifted to articulate the multiplicity of racial dynamics that
Contemporary Asian America (third Edition) : A Multidisciplinary Reader, e…
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