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An epic history of global journeys and new beginnings, this book shows how generations of Asian immigrants and their American-born descendants have made and remade Asian American life in the United States. From the sailors who came on the first trans-Pacific ships in the 1500s to the Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and South Asian immigrants who were recruited to work in the United States only to face massive racial discrimination, and from the Asian exclusion laws of the nineteenth century to Japanese American incarceration during World War II. Over the past fifty years, a new Asian America has emerged out of community activism and the arrival of new immigrants and refugees. No longer a "despised minority," Asian Americans are now held up as America's "model minorities" in ways that reveal the complicated role that race still plays in the United States.
Published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the United States' Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that has remade our "nation of immigrants," this is a new and definitive history of Asian Americans. But more than that, it is a new way of understanding America itself, its complicated histories of race and immigration, and its place in the world today.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 1, 2015 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781494594541
- File size: 456853 KB
- Duration: 15:51:46
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- Lexile® Measure: 1330
- Text Difficulty: 10-12
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Reviews
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This audiobook is a comprehensive history of Asians in the New World with a focus on the experiences of people in the United States. It's full of inspirational stories of a group that has made vital contributions to our nation, but it's also an American tale filled with racism, mistrust, and xenophobia. Narrator Emily Woo Zeller has a clear voice, and she pronounces every word magnificently, allowing the listener to follow the story and revel in the book's details. She does, however, read with a rhythm that doesn't vary much, and her lack of character differentiation and monotone undermine her efforts. The audiobook is definitely worth a listen, but Zeller needs to be more versatile. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine -
June 8, 2015
To honor the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, Lee (Angel Island), University of Minnesota historian and director of the Immigration History Research Center, tackles the sensitive subject of Asian-American assimilation in this ambitious, sweeping, and insightful survey. Charting the immigration story of individual nations rather than employing the “simplistic and monolithic ‘model minority’ lens,” Lee opens with 19th-century indentured servitude as Chinese “coolies” arrived in the Americas, and moves through the subsequent experiences of immigrants from Japan, Korea, and a range of South and Southeast Asian countries. Part two tracks each group’s struggle for acceptance, Part Three covers the impact of WWII, and Part Four addresses the 1.2 million displaced Southeast Asian refugees who settled in the U.S. after 1975. Lee brings her Chinese-American background into the mix, dating her roots to a great-great-great-grandfather who arrived during the California Gold Rush. As the rush wound down, the Chinese provided services such as laundries and restaurants—self-employment offering a solution to the harsh reality of workplace discrimination. Despite assimilation and socio-economic success, Lee reminds readers that “Asian Americans are seen as Asians, not Americans, and come to embody whatever threat the land of their ancestry allegedly poses to the United States.” Agent: Sandra Dijkstra, Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.
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