REVIEWS | EXCERPT | CONTENTS | AUTHOR BIO | SUBJECT CATEGORIES
Surveying the new contours of Asian America
Contemporary Asian American Communities
Intersections and Divergences
edited by Linda Trinh Vő and Rick Bonus
"Linda Vő and Rick Bonus identify the importance of 'everyday spaces' as critical sites for understanding changes occurring in Asian Pacific American communities. Essays in this book cover a wide range of topics, including youth, ethnically diverse populations, professional sectors, gays and lesbians, the urban poor, and multiracial communities. The editors stimulate and provoke new thinking about the ways that our communities are responding to developments in politics, technology, and cultural production."
—Glenn Omatsu, Associate Editor, Amerasia Journal, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, and co-editor of Asian Americans: The Movement and Moment
Once thought of in terms of geographically bounded spaces, Asian America has undergone profound changes as a result of post-1965 immigration as well as the growth and reshaping of established communities. This collection of original essays demonstrates that conventional notions of community, of ethnic enclaves determined by exclusion and ghettoization, now have limited use in explaining the dynamic processes of contemporary community formation.
Writing from a variety of perspectives, these contributors expand the concept of community to include sites not necessarily bounded by space; formations around gender, class, sexuality, and generation reveal new processes as well as the demographic diversity of today's Asian American population. The case studies gathered here speak to the fluidity of these communities and to the need for new analytic approaches to account for the similarities and differences between them. Taken together, these essays forcefully argue that it is time to replace the outworn concept of a monolithic Asian America.
Excerpt
Reviews
"The strength of this book is its emphasis on specific case studies that shed light on concrete dimensions of Asian America, and in this way, Vő and Bonus bring fresh tangibility to the lived experiences of Asian Americans."
—The Journal of American Ethnic History
"The book delivers on its promise to demonstrate the diversity of Asian American culture by offering a veritable fest of material dealing with many aspects of the cultural experiences of Asian Americans."
—Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare
"This collection makes for an interesting read and can be useful for undergraduate instruction."
—Social Forces
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: On Intersections and Divergences – Rick Bonus and Linda Trinh Vő
Part I: Communities in Transition: Spaces and Practices
1. Asian and Latino Immigration and the Revitalization of Sunset Park, Brooklyn – Tarry Hum
2. The Politics and Poetics of a Taiwanese Chinese American Identity – Eileen Chia-Ching Fung
3. Southeast Asians in the House: Multiple Layers of Identity – Russell Jeung
4. Gay Asian Men in Los Angeles before the 1980s – Eric C. Wat
5. Pilipinokaba? Internet Discussions in the Filipino Community – Emily Noelle Ignacio
Part II: Communities in Transformation: Identities and Generations
6. Pacific Islander Americans and Asian American Identity – Debbie Hippolite Wright and Paul Spickard
7. "Eligible" to be Japanese American: Multiraciality in Basket Ball Leagues and Beauty Pageants – Rebecca Chiyoko King
8. Young Asian American Professionals in Los Angeles: A Community in Transition – Pensri Ho
9. Internalized Stereotypes and Shame: The Struggles of 1.5-Generation Korean Americans in Hawai'i – Mary Yu Danico
10. Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurial Children – Lisa Sun-Hee Park
Part III: Communities of Alternatives: Representations and Politics
11. Imagining Panethnic Community and Performing Identity in Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book – Karen Har-Yen Chow
12. Addressing Domestic Violence and the South Asian Community in the United States – Margaret Abraham
13. Asian Pacific Americans and Urban Politics – Edward J. W. Park
14. The Political and Philanthropic Contexts for Incorporating Asian American Communities – Jiannbin Lee Shiao
15. How Public-Policy Reforms Shape, and Reveal the Shape of, Asian America – Andrew Leong
About the Contributors
Index
About the Author(s)
 | Linda Trinh Vő is Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. |
 | Rick Bonus, Associate Professor of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington, is the author of Locating Filipino Americans: Ethnicity and the Cultural Politics of Space (Temple). |
Subject Categories
Asian American Studies
Sociology
Race and Ethnicity
In the series
Asian American History and Culture, edited by Sucheng Chan, David Palumbo-Liu, Michael Omi, K. Scott Wong, and Linda Trinh Vő.
The "standard" written histories of Asian immigrants to the United States have been imbued with Western cultural biases. As a critique and corrective to earlier work, Asian American History and Culture, edited by Sucheng Chan, David Palumbo-Liu, Michael Omi, K. Scott Wong, and Linda Trinh Vő, aims to develop a history of Asian Americans that is compatible with their own experience, that treats Asian Americans as agents of historical change and as creators of a new culture. In addition, this series intends to focus on the groups that are flourishing in the contemporary U.S.—Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese—about whom little has been written as well as to add to the substantial work done on the Chinese and Japanese in this country.