LatinAsian Cartographies

History, Writing, and the National Imaginary

By Susan Thananopavarn

SERIES: Latinidad: Transnational Cultures in the United States

Rutgers University Press

LatinAsian Cartographies examines how Latina/o and Asian American writers provide important counter-narratives to the stories of racial encroachment that have come to characterize twenty-first century dominant discourses on race. Susan Thananopavarn contends that the Asian American and Latina/o presence in the United States, although often considered marginal in discourses of American history and nationhood, is in fact crucial to understanding how national identity has been constructed historically and continues to be constructed in the present day.

Thananopavarn creates a new “LatinAsian” view of the United States that emphasizes previously suppressed aspects of national history, including imperialism, domestic racism during World War II, Cold War operations in Latin America and Asia, and the politics of borders in an age of globalization. LatinAsian Cartographies ultimately reimagines national narratives in a way that transforms dominant ideas of what it means to be American.

LatinAsian Cartographies is an excellent book that widens the scope of Asian American, Latin American, and American studies. Thananopavarn's comparative study allows us to engage with and learn about the complexities of globalization, transnational migration, citizenship, and belonging. Rudy Guevarra Jr., author of Becoming Mexipino: Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diego

LatinAsian Cartographies intertwines readings of Asian American and Latina/o literature with fascinating historical accounts that often illuminate the urgency of cultural critique for current racial and national politics.' Crystal Parikh, author of Writing Human Rights: The Political Imaginaries of Writers of Color

Across the globe, various social movements
have started to question traditional historical narratives and figures. In this context, LatinAsian Cartographies is an interesting and relevant book. Nicolás Camino, H-Net

SUSAN THANANOPAVARN is a lecturing fellow in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Introduction: Asian American and Latina/o Voices
Writing History, Remapping Nation 1
1 United States Imperialism and Structural
Violence in the Borderlands 31
2 Battle on the Homefront: World War II
and Patriotic Racism 56
3 Cold War Epistemologies 82
4 Globalization and Military Violence
in the LatinAsian Contact Zone 107
Conclusion: American Studies Beyond National Borders 133
Acknowledgments 149
Notes 151
Works Cited 175
Index 185

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