Emerging voices : experiences of underrepresented Asian Americans /

Asia is the source of many understudied ethnic groups that are immigrating to the US. This collection seeks to bridge this knowledge gap with anthropological essays that provide encyclopedic overviews of about seven numerically small Asian American populations: Hmong, Lao, Tibetan, Indonesian, Kashmiri Hindus, Thai, and Burmese. The book purposefully undermines conventional definitions of Asian Americans, including a chapter on the Romany (often mistakenly termed "gypsies") because of linguistic evidence that they originated in northern India. Two chapters on the Mong argue that misinformation has caused scholars and the public to confuse this group with the Hmong (the literature considers the former a variant in pronunciation). This emphasis on identity politics permeates other chapters. "Indonesian" breaks down into Chinese, Javanese, and Batak. Similarly, "Burmese" turns into Burmans, Chinese, and Karen. Even the comparatively homogenous "Thai" dissolve into Americanized forms of feminist Buddhism and marriages across "the entire racial spectrum" (p.164). The book's emphasis on the bewildering hybridity of Asian Americans may indeed prove to be the key to a new paradigm for Asian American studies, but it will deter undergraduate students and nonspecialists. Summing Up: Recommended. Faculty/specialists. J. Hein University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire