Asian American Studies Subject Guide — AMST 1700: American Landscapes (Asian American Communities) - Waterbury

An authoritative account of the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese aliens during World War II.

In Japanese American Ethnicity, Takeyuki Tsuda explores the contemporary ethnic experiences of Japanese Americans from the second to the fourth generations and the extent to which they remain connected to their ancestral cultural heritage. He also places Japanese Americans in transnational and diasporic context and analyzes the performance of ethnic heritage through the example of taiko drumming ensembles.

From vividly recollected personal experiences, Out of the Frying Pan is a fresh, personal account of one of the greatest injustices in 20th-century U.S. history. Bill Hosokawa, this country's leading Japanese American journalist, tells how he, his wife, and their infant child were herded into a U.S. World War II relocation camp in Wyoming.

This anthology, a diverse and illuminating collection of primary documents and stories by Chinese Americans, provides an intimate and textured history of the Chinese in America from their arrival during the California Gold Rush to the present.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018. The deeply reported story of one indelible family transplanted from rural China to New York City, forging a life between two worlds.

Iris Chang, the daughter of second-wave Chinese immigrants, has written a narrative that encompasses the entire history of one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States, an epic story that spans 150 years and continues to the present day. Chang takes a fresh look at what it means to be an American and draws a complex portrait of the many accomplishments of the Chinese in their adopted country, from building the transcontinental railroad to major scientific and technological advances

Of Orphans and Warriors explores the social and cultural history of largely urban, American-born Chinese from the 1930s through the 1990s, focusing primarily on those living in California. Chun thus opens a window onto the ways in which these Americans born of Chinese ancestry negotiated their identity over a half century.

This book answers the following questions for the student or interested reader: Who are the Korean people? Why did they come to the United States? How did they adapt to their new country? How are they received by the majority of Americans? What are their accomplishments, problems, and contributions to American society?

Nazli Kibria draws on interviews with second-generation Chinese and Korean Americans to explore their experiences of race, identity, and adaptation in the United States. The book aims to go beyond the frameworks created to study white ethnic or racial minority experiences to examine the unique process of integration and acceptance into mainstream American society reported by those from these groups who came of age in America in the 1980s and 1990s.

Haunting the Korean Diaspora explores the repressed history of emotional and physical violence between the United States and Korea and the unexamined reverberations of sexual relationships between Korean women and American soldiers.

In the first book-length study of Vietnamese American literature, Isabelle Thuy Pelaud probes the complexities of Vietnamese American identity and politics. She provides an analytical introduction to the literature, showing how generational differences play out in genre and text. In addition, she asks, can the term Vietnamese American be disassociated from representations of the war without erasing its legacy? Pelaud delineates the historical, social, and cultural terrains of the writing as well as the critical receptions and responses to them.

This concise interpretation of the Vietnamese experience in America begins with the fall of Saigon in 1975 when enormous waves of refugees fled Vietnam. It graphically details their flight to asylum countries in Asia and then to the United States. Based in part on firsthand interviews, the book recounts vivid stories of the horror of getting out of Vietnam and the difficulties of starting over in a new country. It emphasizes the resettlement process in the United States, from the policies of the U.S. government to aspects of community acceptance and conflict, and describes Vietnamese culture and the changes it has undergone in the process of becoming a new Vietnamese-American culture.

In her research on popular culture of the Vietnamese diaspora, Nhi T. Lieu explores how people displaced by war reconstruct cultural identity in the aftermath of migration. Embracing American democratic ideals and consumer capitalism prior to arriving in the United States, postwar Vietnamese refugees endeavored to assimilate and live the American Dream. In The American Dream in Vietnamese, she claims that nowhere are these fantasies played out more vividly than in the Vietnamese American entertainment industry.

From the perspectives of ethnic studies, history, literary criticism, and legal studies, the original essays in this volume examine the ways in which the colonial history of the Philippines has shaped Filipino American identity, culture, and community formation.

Rick Baldoz explores the complex relationship between Filipinos and the U.S. by looking at the politics of immigration, race, and citizenship on both sides of the Philippine-American divide: internationally through an examination of American imperial ascendancy and domestically through an exploration of the social formation of Filipino communities in the United States.

This book documents how Filipino Americans have grown within the context of political forces, the prevailing social order, rights, and responsibilities of individuals, economic success, and the American Dream.

America has long been a destination, then a launch pad, for newcomers seeking better lives. This text focuses on three waves of immigration through the stories of three families: the Kotharis, Patels and Sarmas.

Namasté America tells the story of Indian immigrants in America, focusing on one of the largest communities, Chicago.

The Indian American community is one of the fastest growing immigrant communities in the U.S. Unlike previous generations, they are marked by a high degree of training as medical doctors, engineers, scientists, and university professors. American Karma draws on participant observation and in-depth interviews to explore how these highly skilled professionals have been inserted into the racial dynamics of American society and transformed into "people of color".