Lee, Erika
The Making of Asian America: A History
Simon & Schuster (New York)
2015
OUR SYNOPSIS: Erika Lee demonstrates how Asian people have greatly contributed to histories of the Americas, taking a hemispheric approach while focusing on the United States. She shows that the long Asian American struggle for inclusion and rights is fundamental to American stories, stretching back to the sixteenth century and forward into the twenty-first. With chapters on Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and South Asian immigrants, she sheds light on both diversity and commonalities in Asian American experiences.
BIG QUESTIONS:
To what extent does a transnational analytical approach align with Asian American histories?
How did gender relate to Asian immigration experiences in the U.S., in both exclusion and non-exclusion eras?
FEATURE QUOTES:
“Race has never been just a matter of black and white in the United States. Asian Americans have been both included and excluded from the country, sometimes simultaneously. In exemplifying this complicated and contingent history of American raced relations, Asian Americans remain absolutely central to understanding the ongoing ways in which race works together.” (9)
“The complexity of this history runs from families like mine who are now seven generations in the United States to the most recent arrivals like the Chinese international students I see in my classrooms today and the Karen and Bhutanese refugee children I’ll likely see in a few years. Asian Americans have experienced both the limits and the possibilities of America.” (391)
PRIMARY SOURCES:
“Executive Order 9066, February 19, 1942,” General Records of the United States Government, Record Group 11, National Archives (Washington, D.C.), https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/executive-order-9066.
BALTIMORE CONNECTIONS:
Where and how have you experienced Asian American culture in Baltimore?
