Showing titles in Asian American Studies

In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States, all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family's story after her grandmother’s death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together.

In 1966 Fan Shen, a newly minted Red Guard, plunged happily into China's Cultural Revolution. Disillusionment soon followed, then turned to disgust and fear when Shen discovered that his compatriots had tortured and murdered a doctor whose house he'd helped raid and whose beautiful daughter he secretly adored. A story of coming of age in the midst of monumental historical upheaval, Shen's Gang of One is more than a memoir of one young man's harrowing experience during a time of terror.

Yunte Huang ingeniously traces Charlie Chan from his real beginnings as a bullwhip-wielding detective in territorial Hawaii to his reinvention as a literary sleuth and Hollywood film icon. Huang finally resurrects the "honorable detective" from the graveyard of detested postmodern symbols and reclaims him as the embodiment of America’s rich cultural diversity. The result is one of the most critically acclaimed books of the year and a "deeply personal...voyage into racial stereotyping and the humanizing force of storytelling" (Donna Seaman, Los Angeles Times).

A harrowing journey into a milestone event of Canadian history: the use of Chinese coolies to help build the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia in hazardous conditions. After the CPR is built in 1885, Yang Hok, a former coolie, treks along the railway to return his half-Chinese/half-Native son to the boy's mother, where he confronts the conflicts arising from road-building among the Chinese and Native peoples.

In this thrilling panorama of real-life events, the bestselling author of Empire of Pain investigates a secret world run by a surprising criminal: a charismatic middle-aged grandmother, who from a tiny noodle shop in New York’s Chinatown managed a multi-million dollar business smuggling people...

Fleeing the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 and fueled by a burning desire for a better life, Apple embarks on a daring journey to pursue her doctoral education in America. With no backup plan, Apple has to make this journey work. But she has no idea that her starting place, Las Cruces, NM, is a quiet desert town—a far cry from the bustling metropolis she envisioned. Anxious, ignorant, broken, lost, and homesick, Apple is also excited, curious, and open-minded. Will she simply survive the fish-out-of-the-water situation many immigrants experience, or will she thrive?

Just as WASPs, Irish-Catholics and Our Crowd Jews once made the ascent from immigrants to powerbrokers, it is now the Indian-American's turn. Citigroup, PepsiCo and Mastercard are just a handful of the Fortune 500 companies led by a group known as the "Twice Blessed." Yet little is known about...

On October 24, 1944, more than 200 American soldiers were surrounded by German infantry deep in the Vosges Mountains of Eastern France. When their food, ammunition, and medical supplies ran out, the area's army headquarters turned to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated unit of Japanese American soldiers, to achieve what other units had failed to do: rescue the "lost battalion".

In this thrilling panorama of real-life events, the bestselling author of Empire of Pain investigates a secret world run by a surprising criminal: a charismatic middle-aged grandmother, who from a tiny noodle shop in New York’s Chinatown managed a multi-million dollar business smuggling people...

NAMED AN ESSENTIAL READ OF THE YEAR BY THE New Yorker In his fourth book of poems, award-winning poet Garrett Hongo sees coastlines and waters, skylines and ancestral lines for what they inspire and teach. In a surpassingly beautiful collection of poems, with his characteristic long-lined...

Asian American Sexual Politics explores the topics of beauty, self-esteem, and sexual attraction among Asian Americans. The book draws on sixty in-depth interviews to show how constructions of Asian American gender and sexuality tend to reinforce the social and political dominance for whites, particularly white males, even in the supposed “post-racial” United States.

A “provocative and sweeping” (Time) blend of family history and original reportage that explores—and reimagines—Asian American identity in a Black and white world “[Kang’s] exploration of class and identity among Asian Americans will be talked about for years to come.”—Jennifer...

A mother and race scholar seeks to answer her daughter’s many questions about race and racism with an earnest exploration into race relations and affirmative action from the perspectives of Asian Americans Before being struck down by the US Supreme Court in June 2023, affirmative action...

An essential resource that addresses the unique experiences of trauma, healing, and mental health in Asian and Asian American communities. Coauthors Soo Jin Lee and Linda Yoon are professional therapists who witnessed firsthand how mental health issues often went unaddressed not only in their...

The completion of the transcontinental railroad in May 1869 is usually told as a story of national triumph and a key moment for American Manifest Destiny. The Railroad made it possible to cross the country in a matter of days instead of months, paved the way for new settlers to come out west, and helped speed America's entry onto the world stage as a modern nation that spanned a full continent. It also created vast wealth for its four owners, including the fortune with which Leland Stanford would found Stanford University some two decades later.

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE The heartrending story of twin sisters torn apart by China’s one-child policy and the rise of international adoption—from the author of the National Book Award finalist Nothing to Envy “Remarkable . . . Barbara Demick movingly traces this...

This definitive history of American xenophobia is "essential reading for anyone who wants to build a more inclusive society" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist) The United States is known as a nation of immigrants. But it is also a nation of xenophobia...

If you are an Asian American who has experienced racial violence, verbal harassment, stereotyping, or microaggressions, you might feel like the world is unsafe. You may suffer from anxiety, depression, or painful memories as a result of this trauma. And if you seek help, you may find that Western-trained mental health professionals simply can't understand your pain and life experiences. This book provides culturally informed treatment methods to help you heal from and fortify yourself against race-based trauma-including intergenerational and historical trauma-and stress.

The author at 16 years old was evacuated with her family to an internment camp for Japanese Americans, along with 110,000 other people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast. She faced an indefinite sentence behind barbed wire in crowded, primitive camps. She struggled for survival and dignity, and endured psychological scarring that has lasted a lifetime. This memoir is told from the heart and mind of a woman now nearly eighty years old who experienced the challenges and wounds of her internment at a crucial point in her development as a young adult.

One of America's best-known rock and entertainment journalists describes his journey from his childhood, cooped up in the "rice room" of his family's restaurant in Oakland's Chinatown, where he did chores, to the major role he played as a writer and editor at Rolling Stone. It is a story of teen worship of Elvis, but also of Chinese customs and the tragic murder of his brother, and of the '60s scene in San Francisco, where he found freedom - and his career.