Review by Booklist Review
Frustrated by the relative invisibility of Asians in U.S. history and culture, Zia, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, details the diverse cultural backgrounds of Asians in America. She notes the historical cycles that have seen Americans alternately embracing and repudiating Asians. Zia recounts the immigration of her own parents, their marriage, and their attempts to make themselves into Americans, efforts that were complicated when Zia came of age during the social and racial upheaval of the 1960s. She also recounts the dubious U.S. history of race relations regarding Asians, regrouping favored and disfavored nationalities, temporarily reclassifying favored groups as whites. She examines the internment of the Japanese during World War II, exploitation of Chinese workers in the West and the South, and the racial animus aimed at Vietnamese relocated in the U.S. after the war. Zia sees the convergence of growth in Asian populations, the diversity of that population, and an incipient Asian American movement that may initiate increased political power and social influence in the U.S. --Vanessa Bush
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
While growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s and '60s, Zia was provided with plenty of American history by her teachers, while her father inundated her with stories of China's past. Yet she was left wondering about people like herself, Asian Americans, who seemed to be "MIH--Missing in History." In this ambitious and richly detailed account of the formation of the Asian-American community--which extends from the first major wave of immigration to Gold Mountain" (as the Chinese dubbed America during the gold rush) to the recent influx of Southeast Asians, who since 1975 have nearly doubled the Asian-American population--Zia fills those absences, while examining the complex origins of the events she relates. The result is a vivid personal and national history, in which Zia guides us through a range of recent flash points that have galvanized the Asian-American community. Among them are the brutal, racially motivated murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit in 1982; the devastating riots in Los Angeles in 1992, where almost half of the $1 billion in damages to the city were sustained by Korean-American shop owners; and the embattled South Asian New York City cab drivers who, in May of 1998, banded together with the New York Taxi Workers alliance and pulled off a citywide strike. The recent boom in the Asian-American population (from half a million in the 1950s to 7.3 million in 1990), coupled with Zia's fresh perspective, makes it unlikely that their stories will go missing again. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Asian Americans have only recently emerged as a cohesive, self-identified racial group. Now, award-winning Asian American journalist Zia traces the changing politics and cultures of this significant but disjointed group of people by examining the incidents that helped galvanize them. Drawing on both family stories and public events (everything from the Vincent Chin affair to the boycott of Korean American--owned stores in Brooklyn) Zia surveys the history of Asian Americans, the rapid development of their new political force, and the unique issues they face. This well-written book is an important addition to the growing field of Asian American studies. Recommended for public and academic libraries.--Mee-Len Hom, Hunter Coll. Lib., New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Zia, a Chinese-American and co-editor of the reference Asian American Biography, intertwines a memoir of her own life with an informal history of Asians in America. Unless one starts with prehistoric immigrants crossing the Bering Straits, the first Asians to arrive in America were Filipinos. Spanish traders impressed them as seaman, and many jumped ship in Louisiana in the 16th century. After the Spanish-American War, Filipinos, technically US citizens, immigrated in large numbers to Alaska, where they worked, under barbarous conditions, in salmon canneries. Of course, as Zia points out, the Japanese fared even worse, rounded up and placed in internment camps as WWII began, even as many of the first-born, the nisei, fought both in Europe and the Pacific. In fact, in one of Zia's many telling anecdotes, an all-Japanese unit was set to liberate Dachau, but was held back because of the publicity problem. Zia is perhaps most passionate describing the Chinese, reminding us of the infamous exclusion law of the 1880s'instituted after many of them had died to build the railroads and the country, in a sense, was done with them. Into the larger Chinese story Zia weaves her own more intimate history. A child of the 1960s and initially a traditional, compliant daughter on the path toward becoming a physician, she threw off the traces, joining forces with black activists and groups opposing the Vietnam War. Yet Asians were special, ``invisible'' and yet discriminated against even among activists. Instead of following in the mold of other activists, Zia took yet another route'to Detroit, where she bolted together automobiles and came to see herself as a writer and agitator for Chinese-American rights. Evenhanded, subtle, and engaging, though Zia's interwoven memoir is less compelling than the vast story of these many peoples, laboring mightily to become Americans. (B&w photos, not seen)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
