Asians in America: The Peoples of East, Southeast, and South Asia in American Life and Culture – serie

Since the immigration law changes in 1965, the population of Asian Americans in this country has increased dramatically and has also become more diverse as newer groups have joined the earlier Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, and Asian Indians. Especially notable are the refugees from the Vietnam War and other immigrants from Southeast Asia: Lao, Khmer, Hmong, Thai, and others. In addition, political and economic changes in Asia have stimulated the migration of highly educated Asians and the flow of capital from their trans-Pacific homelands to the United States. The essays in this volume provide a framework for understanding the historical experiences of Asians in the United States, with emphasis on the years after World War II.

Before World War II, family life in Asian American communities was greatly influenced by immigration policies and cultural practices. For some groups, such as the Chinese and the Filipinos, a dearth of females resulted in the appearance of bachelor societies. Among the Japanese, a healthy family society was maintained by the practice of sponsoring picture brides. The essays in this volume examine such issues as the role of the family, generational changes, and the significance of kinship, networks, newspapers, and credit associations in various Asian American groups.

In recent years emphasis has been placed on the fluidity of identities of immigrants who have migrated across national boundaries. Scholars are more interested in cultural continuities and discontinuities, the adaptation of traditional practices, and the cultural invention of new practices. These essays explore the construction of new identities, changing group boundaries, generational conflict, the development of new categories such as multiracial Asians through intermarriage, and the maintenance of transnational ties.

The United States has seen several anti-Asian movements, as evidenced by immigration policies, naturalization laws, state and local statutes, and acts of violence. In recent years, Asian Americans have mobilized against prejudice and discrimination, organizing media groups and panethnic coalitions to achieve greater political effectiveness. These essays address recent issues of interethnic relations and conflict and politics in Asian American communities, ranging from the Japanese American redress movement for unjustified World War II internment, Japan-bashing, the model minority stereotype, resistance to urban renewal, interethnic conflicts with other groups, Asian American politics, Asian American panethnicity, and involvement in ancestral homeland politics.