Arthur Sakamoto, ChangHwan Kim, and Isao Takei
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037832
- eISBN:
- 9780252095955
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037832.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter explores the beginning of a new stage of Asian American history that is characterized by improved socioeconomic opportunities and a move away from the Asian American strongholds of ...
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This chapter explores the beginning of a new stage of Asian American history that is characterized by improved socioeconomic opportunities and a move away from the Asian American strongholds of Hawaii and California. The high levels of Asian American demographic growth and migration to the New South are facilitated by a less discriminatory labor market than was characteristic of the pre-Civil Rights era. Many Asian Americans are flocking to the New South to take advantage of its improved socioeconomic opportunities. Whereas the better-paying and more desirable jobs were reserved for whites in the Old South, Asian Americans in the New South no longer appear to be automatically excluded from the top of the “racial hierarchy.”Less
This chapter explores the beginning of a new stage of Asian American history that is characterized by improved socioeconomic opportunities and a move away from the Asian American strongholds of Hawaii and California. The high levels of Asian American demographic growth and migration to the New South are facilitated by a less discriminatory labor market than was characteristic of the pre-Civil Rights era. Many Asian Americans are flocking to the New South to take advantage of its improved socioeconomic opportunities. Whereas the better-paying and more desirable jobs were reserved for whites in the Old South, Asian Americans in the New South no longer appear to be automatically excluded from the top of the “racial hierarchy.”
Catherine Ceniza Choy
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814717226
- eISBN:
- 9781479886388
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814717226.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This chapter examines the role of adoptees in the history of Asian international adoption in the United States. Focusing on the socio-historical as well as aesthetic contributions by Asian American ...
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This chapter examines the role of adoptees in the history of Asian international adoption in the United States. Focusing on the socio-historical as well as aesthetic contributions by Asian American adult adoptees, it challenges the notion that international adoption is a “quiet migration.” The chapter analyzes two documentary films by Deann Borshay Liem, First Person Plural and In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, in relation to two experimental films: Marlon Fuentes's Bontoc Eulogy and Rea Tajiri's History and Memory. It links the works of Borshay Liem, Fuentes, and Tajiri to what literary scholar Lisa Lowe calls “national memory” as it relates to the conception of Asian Americans as immigrants, as “foreigners-within,” in America. It argues that artistic works by and about Asian American adoptees are important to Asian American history.Less
This chapter examines the role of adoptees in the history of Asian international adoption in the United States. Focusing on the socio-historical as well as aesthetic contributions by Asian American adult adoptees, it challenges the notion that international adoption is a “quiet migration.” The chapter analyzes two documentary films by Deann Borshay Liem, First Person Plural and In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, in relation to two experimental films: Marlon Fuentes's Bontoc Eulogy and Rea Tajiri's History and Memory. It links the works of Borshay Liem, Fuentes, and Tajiri to what literary scholar Lisa Lowe calls “national memory” as it relates to the conception of Asian Americans as immigrants, as “foreigners-within,” in America. It argues that artistic works by and about Asian American adoptees are important to Asian American history.
Augusto Espiritu
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780824855765
- eISBN:
- 9780824875596
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824855765.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
Despite the turn toward diasporic, transnational, global, and comparative perspectives, this chapter argues that historians of Asian America have largely neglected and need to reflect upon ...
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Despite the turn toward diasporic, transnational, global, and comparative perspectives, this chapter argues that historians of Asian America have largely neglected and need to reflect upon inter-imperial relations--the relations of cooperation, competition, and conflict between empires, including subaltern attempts at creating spaces for maneuver and agency between them. With a focus on the development of the United States as an empire, this article identifies the key inter-imperial relations over time that have shaped the Asian American experience. An awareness of inter-imperial relations helps scholars to account for the political dynamics, the multiple sources of power, and the challenges to existing hegemonies that have structured Asian American lives. An approach sensitive to inter-imperial relations opens up the possibility of recognizing, and comparing, the simultaneous subaltern struggles that cut across nations and immigrant groups.Less
Despite the turn toward diasporic, transnational, global, and comparative perspectives, this chapter argues that historians of Asian America have largely neglected and need to reflect upon inter-imperial relations--the relations of cooperation, competition, and conflict between empires, including subaltern attempts at creating spaces for maneuver and agency between them. With a focus on the development of the United States as an empire, this article identifies the key inter-imperial relations over time that have shaped the Asian American experience. An awareness of inter-imperial relations helps scholars to account for the political dynamics, the multiple sources of power, and the challenges to existing hegemonies that have structured Asian American lives. An approach sensitive to inter-imperial relations opens up the possibility of recognizing, and comparing, the simultaneous subaltern struggles that cut across nations and immigrant groups.
Julia H. Lee
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814752555
- eISBN:
- 9780814752579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814752555.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This concluding chapter contemplates the present state of Afro-Asian relations and begins by thinking about the connections that exist between the past and the present in which African Americans and ...
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This concluding chapter contemplates the present state of Afro-Asian relations and begins by thinking about the connections that exist between the past and the present in which African Americans and Asian Americans find themselves. It focuses on the early twentieth century as a way to elaborate the prevalent, late twentieth-century belief that Afro-Asian relations have always been and will always be primarily hostile because of essentialized cultural differences. The most helpful way to understand the long span of Afro-Asian American history is to think of the past as a corrective that develops an unquestioned account of that history and as a gloss that explicates and contextualizes that relationship. The book concludes that writers were already writing and anticipating the early twenty-first century's obsessions; Asian American and African American cultural productions already indicate alternative narratives of American literary history that look beyond traditional field markers.Less
This concluding chapter contemplates the present state of Afro-Asian relations and begins by thinking about the connections that exist between the past and the present in which African Americans and Asian Americans find themselves. It focuses on the early twentieth century as a way to elaborate the prevalent, late twentieth-century belief that Afro-Asian relations have always been and will always be primarily hostile because of essentialized cultural differences. The most helpful way to understand the long span of Afro-Asian American history is to think of the past as a corrective that develops an unquestioned account of that history and as a gloss that explicates and contextualizes that relationship. The book concludes that writers were already writing and anticipating the early twenty-first century's obsessions; Asian American and African American cultural productions already indicate alternative narratives of American literary history that look beyond traditional field markers.
Amy Sueyoshi
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041785
- eISBN:
- 9780252050268
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041785.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter details how Japan in the 1890s was largely a mystery to Americans. Chinese, on the other hand, evoked strong sentiments of antipathy in San Francisco. As more Japanese arrived, clear ...
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This chapter details how Japan in the 1890s was largely a mystery to Americans. Chinese, on the other hand, evoked strong sentiments of antipathy in San Francisco. As more Japanese arrived, clear distinctions arose between Chinese and Japanese as two separate races, most visibly in the city morgue’s processing of unknown Asian bodies. This differentiation between the two ethnicities further underscored San Francisco’s obsession over its Asian population, which in total made up less than 3 percent of the city’s population at the time. As city officials took pride in their home being an “International City,” communities of color and indigenous people would never have considered it to be a racial utopia. Indeed, San Francisco’s embrace of its immigrant population and diversity would only be available to ethnic whites.Less
This chapter details how Japan in the 1890s was largely a mystery to Americans. Chinese, on the other hand, evoked strong sentiments of antipathy in San Francisco. As more Japanese arrived, clear distinctions arose between Chinese and Japanese as two separate races, most visibly in the city morgue’s processing of unknown Asian bodies. This differentiation between the two ethnicities further underscored San Francisco’s obsession over its Asian population, which in total made up less than 3 percent of the city’s population at the time. As city officials took pride in their home being an “International City,” communities of color and indigenous people would never have considered it to be a racial utopia. Indeed, San Francisco’s embrace of its immigrant population and diversity would only be available to ethnic whites.
Amy Sueyoshi
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041785
- eISBN:
- 9780252050268
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041785.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
In the late 1890s, “wide open” San Francisco, considered also a model city for race relations, appeared to be a place where men and women could configure their intimate lives in expansive and ...
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In the late 1890s, “wide open” San Francisco, considered also a model city for race relations, appeared to be a place where men and women could configure their intimate lives in expansive and unconventional ways. Rising rates of divorce, increasing sexual independence among women, and state-condoned sex work defined the city. Yet as whites explored and enacted new norms of romance and womanhood, increasing freedoms would be less accessible for Asians in America. White writers, lyricists, illustrators, and other producers of leisure culture projected shifting norms of middle-class gender and sexuality on specifically Chinese and Japanese in newspapers, magazines, plays, and musicals. These characterizations would then conflate Chinese and Japanese, previously perceived as two separate races, into a single group. This book details how middle-class white expansion of their own gender and sexual norms marked the formation of the pan-Asian “Oriental,” a deeply sexual racialized stereotype, more than a hundred years ago.Less
In the late 1890s, “wide open” San Francisco, considered also a model city for race relations, appeared to be a place where men and women could configure their intimate lives in expansive and unconventional ways. Rising rates of divorce, increasing sexual independence among women, and state-condoned sex work defined the city. Yet as whites explored and enacted new norms of romance and womanhood, increasing freedoms would be less accessible for Asians in America. White writers, lyricists, illustrators, and other producers of leisure culture projected shifting norms of middle-class gender and sexuality on specifically Chinese and Japanese in newspapers, magazines, plays, and musicals. These characterizations would then conflate Chinese and Japanese, previously perceived as two separate races, into a single group. This book details how middle-class white expansion of their own gender and sexual norms marked the formation of the pan-Asian “Oriental,” a deeply sexual racialized stereotype, more than a hundred years ago.
