Asian American Studies Today

Techno-Orientalism 2.0

New Intersections and Interventions

Edited by David S. Roh, Betsy Huang, Greta A. Niu, and Christopher T. Fan

Rutgers University Press

Techno-Orientalism 2.0 addresses the impact of a volatile post-COVID present on speculative futures by and about Asians. The volume engages with techno-Orientalist inflections in recent high-profile and lesser-known Asian and Asian American speculative fiction, film, television, anime, art, music, journalism, architecture, state-sponsored policy and infrastructural projects, and the now-dominant China Panic.

More info

Techno-Orientalism 2.0

New Intersections and Interventions

Edited by David S. Roh, Betsy Huang, Greta A. Niu, and Christopher T. Fan

Rutgers University Press

Techno-Orientalism 2.0 addresses the impact of a volatile post-COVID present on speculative futures by and about Asians. The volume engages with techno-Orientalist inflections in recent high-profile and lesser-known Asian and Asian American speculative fiction, film, television, anime, art, music, journalism, architecture, state-sponsored policy and infrastructural projects, and the now-dominant China Panic.

More info

Making the Human

Race, Allegory, and Asian Americans

By Corinne Mitsuye Sugino

Rutgers University Press

Making the Human grapples with the interactions between narrative, materiality, and Asian American racialization. Examining contemporary debates over the role of Asian Americans in affirmative action, media representation, police brutality, and public health discourses, Sugino argues media and cultural narratives about Asian Americans shape contemporary ideas about humanity, justice, family, and nation in ways that naturalize hierarchy.

More info

Transpacific Cartographies

Narrating the Contemporary Chinese Diaspora in the United States

By Melody Yunzi Li

Rutgers University Press

Transpacific Cartographies examines how contemporary Chinese diasporic narratives address the existential loss of home for immigrant communities at a time of global precarity and amid rising Sino-US tensions. Melody Li argues that the characters in these stories create multilayered maps that transcend the territorial boundaries that make finding a home in foreign land a seemingly impossible task.

More info

Asian American History

By Huping Ling

Rutgers University Press

A comprehensive survey, Asian American History places Asian immigration to America in international and domestic contexts, and explores the significant elements that define Asian America: imperialism and global capitalist expansion, labor and capital, race and ethnicity, immigration and exclusion, family and work, community and gender roles, assimilation and multiculturalism, panethnicity and identity, transnationalism and globalization, and new challenges and opportunities. It is an up-to-date and easily accessible resource for high school and college students, as well as anyone who is interested in Asian American history.

More info

Chinese Americans in the Heartland

Migration, Work, and Community

By Huping Ling

Rutgers University Press

Focused on the Heartland cities of Chicago, Illinois and St. Louis, Missouri, this book draws rich evidences from various government records, personal stories and interviews, and media reports, and sheds light on the commonalities and uniqueness of the region, as compared to the Asian American communities on the East and West Coast and Hawaii. Some of the poignant stories such as “the Three Moy Brothers,” “Alla Lee,” and “Save Sam Wah Laundry” told in the book are powerful reflections of Asian American history.

More info

Chasing the American Dream in China

Chinese Americans in the Ancestral Homeland

By Leslie Kim Wang

Rutgers University Press

Chasing the American Dream in China centers the stories of second-generation Chinese American professionals who “return” to their ancestral homeland to build careers. This book highlights complex issues of ethnic identity and belonging faced by Chinese Americans in both the United States and China as they position themselves as indispensable economic bridges between the world’s two greatest superpowers.

More info

Between Foreign and Family

Return Migration and Identity Construction among Korean Americans and Korean Chinese

By Helene K. Lee

Rutgers University Press

This book explores the impact of inconsistent rules of ethnic inclusion and exclusion on the economic and social lives of Korean Americans and Korean Chinese living in Seoul. Lee highlights the “logics of transnationalism” that shape the relationships between these return migrants and their employers, co-workers, friends, family, and the South Korean state.

More info

The Resilient Self

Gender, Immigration, and Taiwanese Americans

By Chien-Juh Gu

Rutgers University Press

This book explores how international migration re-shapes women’s senses of themselves. Gu uses life-history interviews and ethnographic observations to illustrate how immigration creates gendered work and family contexts for middle-class Taiwanese American women who negotiate and resist the social and psychological effects of the processes of immigration and settlement.

More info

Redefining Japaneseness

Japanese Americans in the Ancestral Homeland

By Jane H. Yamashiro

Rutgers University Press

Redefining Japaneseness chronicles how Japanese American migrants to Japan experience both racial inclusion and cultural dislocation while negotiating between the categories of Japanese and “foreigner.” Drawing from extensive observations and interviews with Japanese Americans who are geographically, culturally, and linguistically diverse, Jane H. Yamashiro reveals wide variations in how Japanese Americans perceive both Japaneseness and Americanness. Her findings have major implications for both Asian American studies and scholarship on transnational migration and global diasporic identity.

More info