Throughout American history, Asians have been stereotyped as both "subhuman and superhuman threats." (p. x) "An Asian American woman is a lotus blossom, but also a dragon lady." (p. xi) Asian Americans are "whiz kids... who do not complain" (p. ix) but also "harbingers of disease and immorality." (p. x) How did we get here? The author addresses this question "by emphasizing three interconnected themes in Asian American histories of the United States: violence, erasure, and resistance." (p. xii)
Notably, she immediately dispels the myth that Asian Americans are a monolith. She showcases the diversity within the demographic by purposely "writing this book... to narrate and to integrate less well-known stories about Asian Americans... such as Indian, Korean, Filipino, and Cambodian Americans, as well as mixed race and adopted Asian Americans, among others." (p. xvi)
In the preface, the author explains how most Asian American history courses and books tend to cover topics chronologically, "ending approximately in the 1980s...with scant attention to more contemporary issues." (p. xvii) I have found this to be exactly the case in my experience, and I was intrigued by her decision to feature "multiple temporal origins of Asian American history, beginning in 2020, with subsequent chapters moving back in time... [to] illuminate connections among historical events hitherto unseen, such as... the continuity of historical alliances between Black and Asian Americans, from Frederick Douglass's 1869 speech advocating for Chinese immigration to Yuri Kochiyama and Malcolm X's friendship in the 1960s." (p. xvii)
Truly, the author's unique approach made Asian American history feel less like static past events and more like modern-day issues. For example, the book started with the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the work of Stop AAPI Hate in documenting anti-Asian violence and discrimination, and tied the resurgence of racism at the start of the pandemic to the long history in America of "association of Asian bodies with disease" (p. 2) dating back to the first wave of Asian immigrants in the 1800s. It also provided context to how "COVD-19 was taking a disproportionate toll on Filipino American nurses" (p. 12) by fleshing out the decades-long history of Filipino nurses in the American healthcare workforce. She also connected the 2021 killings of 6 Asian American women in spas in north GA to America's history of sexualizing and objectifying Asian women, starting with the Page Act of 1875, which "created a system of enforcement that conflated Asian women's migration with prostitution." (p. 158)
Other often overlooked Asian American histories that are discussed in this book: the arrival and contribution of refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, including the involvement of the U.S. in creating the situations from which they fled; the role of Asian Americans in U.S. farming, agricultural workers' rights, and the restaurant industry; the service and treatment of Asian Americans in the U.S. military; the effect of imperialism and the struggle for independence in their homelands on Korean, Filipino, and Indian immigrants.
Overall, this book is a great survey-level introduction to parts of Asian American history that are somehow both commonly overlooked and also contemporarily relevant. It does not delve into any great detail, and is not academically dry. The author frequently presents anecdotal stories of diverse Asian American experiences that personalize the topics, including episodes from her own life, showing that Asian American history is not just a field of study, but a living history unfolding all around us, even within our own Asian American families.
Incidentally, I have just one complaint: On page 46, the author refers to a "Lao Student Association" that promotes "Lao culture", and then on page 47, there's a "Laotian American Society" that supports the "Laotian community". What's the difference between "Lao" and "Laotian"? An explainer would have been helpful. I searched it up and found this article: "Is it 'Lao' or 'Laotian'? In Laos, There's a Big Difference".
