Asian Americans and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots/Uprising

Honoring Asian diversity by collecting Asian subpopulation data in health research.

The Name of Hate

The Challenge of Providing Culturally Competent Services

Asian American graphic narratives typically produce meaning through arrangements of images, words, and sequences, though some forgo words completely and others offer an imagined “before” and “after” within the confines of a single panel. Created by or featuring Asian Americans or Asians in a US or Canadian context, they have appeared in a broad spectrum of formats, including the familiar mainstream genre comics, such as superhero serials from DC or Marvel Comics; comic strips; self-published minicomics; and critically acclaimed, award-winning graphic novels. Some of these works have explicitly explored Asian American issues, such as anti-Asian racism, representations of history, questions of identity, and transnationalism; others may feature Asian or Asian American characters or settings without necessarily addressing established or familiar Asian American issues. Indeed, many works made by Asian American creators have little or no obvious or explicit Asian American content at all, and some non-Asian American creators have produced works with Asian American representations, including racist stereotypes and caricatures. The earliest representations of Asians in comics form in the United States were racist representations in the popular press, generally in single-panel caricatures that participated in anti-immigration discourses. However, some Asian immigrants in the early to mid-20th century also used graphic narratives to show and critique the treatment of Asians in the United States. In the realm of mainstream genre comics, Asian Americans have participated in the industry in a variety of different ways. As employees for hire, they created many well-known series and characters, generally not drawing, writing, or editing content that is recognizably Asian American. Since the 2010s, though, Asian American creators have reimagined Asian or Asian American versions of legacy characters like Superman and the Hulk and created new heroes like Ms. Marvel. In the wake of an explosion of general and scholarly interest in graphic novels in the 1990s, many independent Asian American cartoonists have become significant presences in the contemporary graphic narrative world.

Asians and Asian Americans are the most suburbanized people of color in the United States. While Asians and Asian Americans have been moving to the metropolitan fringe since the 1940s, their settlement accelerated in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. This was partly the result of relaxed US immigration policies following the 1965 Hart-Celler Act. Globalization and burgeoning transnational economies across the so-called Pacific Rim also encouraged outmigration. Whether it is Korean or Indian immigrants in northern New Jersey or Vietnamese refugees in suburban Houston, Asians and Asian Americans have shifted Americans’ understandings of “typical” suburbia. In the late 1980s, academic researchers and policymakers started paying closer attention to this phenomenon, especially in Southern California, where Asians and Asian Americans often clustered together in select suburbs. Sociologists, in particular, observed how greater Los Angeles’s economic, political, and built landscapes changed as immigrants and refugees—predominantly from Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea, India, and Vietnam—established roots throughout the region, including Orange County. Since then, other studies of heavily populated Asian and Asian American ethnic suburbs—or “ethnoburbs”—have emerged, including research on New York City, Boston, and Washington, DC. Nonetheless, scholarship remains focused on Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, and other hubs of the metropolitan West Coast. Research and scholarship on Asians and Asian Americans living in the suburbs has grown over the last decade. This is partly a response to demographic shifts occurring beyond the coasts. Moreover, geographers, historians, and urban planners have joined the discussion, producing critical studies on race, class, architecture, and political economy. Despite the breadth and depth of recent research, literature on Asian and Asian American suburbanization remains limited. There is thus much room for additional research on this subject, given a majority of Asians and Asian Americans in the United States live outside city limits.

Moving Forward: Asian Americans in the Discourse of Race and Social Problems

Mental health care among marginalized populations in the United States

A Visual Critique of Racism: African American Art from Southern California

Guest Editors' Introduction

Since the late 1960s, Asian American studies began to become a significant discipline and a common response to the immigrant experiences, but most of the discussions unbalancedly focus on reacting against the racial and ethnic discrimination imposed on the minority immigrants; that is why the assertions such as “claiming American” (to quote Maxine Hong Kingston) or “uncovering the buried past (to quote Japanese American historian Yuji Ichioka) are advocated vehemently in their search of an (American) identity. However, the category of Asian American or Chinese American and the position against a hegemonic majority, is no longer sufficient and even not adequate for a more recent and diverse group of emerging Asian immigrants, who may not be primarily concerned with the to-be-or-not-to-be dilemma or worlds-choosing. Since Asian immigrants historically have been considered transnational and diasporic, Asian American studies' focus on either the American experiences of Asian immigrants or the rootedness of Asian Americans in the United States needs to be reevaluated. In other words, what emerges out of the hyphenated-status discussion is the demand to rethink and reconceptualize the original ideal of an Asian American identity rooted in the U.S. experience and the need to include a variety of Asian American experiences that go beyond the national boundary of the United States. Like what Evelyn Hu-DeHart and Arif Dirlik maintain in Across the Pacific: Asian Americans and Globalization, important issues, such as how Asian American studies involve more relevance to a transnational and immigrating aspect and also incorporate diasporic linkages in Asian immigrant experiences, need to be emphasized and scrutinized. The thesis is composed of two parts, attempting to incorporate textual analysis with the Chinese translation of the novel. The first part the thesis is composed of four chapters. In the first chapter, I provide a brief account of Chinese immigration history to serve as a background understanding of Chuang Hua’s Crossings. Besides, a succinct introduction of Crossings is presented too, partly to emphasize its significance and its difference from other Chinese immigrant narratives better known, and partly to spell out the issues of identity and exilic status. In Chapter Two of this thesis, my focus is on the protagonist, Fourth Jane, the patriarchal principles she has to obey, and the “system of balances” she is cast in. For this middle child in her traditional family, she experiences cross-cultural narratives about being a daughter and a female in an unyielding familiar structure and in a stagnant love relationship with her unnamed Parisian lover, as well as being a Chinese emigre in Europe in the 1960s. Her own individual displacement is a mobility not merely crossing from homecoming to wandering as a defiant female, but also crossing from England to America to Paris as a Chinese. Furthermore, I argue for a different reading of exile to elucidate the minority mobile subjects’ identities. Conventionally, exile is experienced as a dislocation, both physical and psychic. However, exile may also offer liberating possibilities. Amy Kaminsky notes that the experience of physical and emotional rupture can lead to personal growth and transformation. Through the discovery of an inner capacity “to survive and grow in the new environment” (37), one may find a greater independence and confidence and thus gain a more fulfilling self-affirmation and realization. This act of self-discovery to rebirth can be seen as an emergence of new personhood and subjectivity. The concept of “identity on the move” can also be associated with the immigrant’s position in exile and between worlds, and the unfixed ethnicity should be put within this framework of discussion as well. Chapter Three of the thesis reexamines the framework of “between-worlds” and the search of self under the “Orientalist” stereotype and in dislocation. The feeling of being between worlds, totally at home nowhere is a duality that is characteristic of all people on the move and in a minority position. The feeling of being between worlds is at the core of many ethnic minority writers and, consequently, of the books they write. Superficially, Chuang Hua’s Crossings deal with the “between-worlds” ambiguity fostered in the protagonist’s mind; however, Chuang Hua tries to accomplish more to carve out a new position for Fourth Jane while confronting the “between-worlds” complex and suffering from a personal fragmentedness. The between-world complexity is indeed a paradox, for Fourth Jane the female emigre is simultaneously subordinate and central, victimized and heroic and active. On the one hand, being caught between worlds can be interpreted to mean occupying the space or gulf between two banks; then, one is in a state of suspension, accepted by neither side and therefore truly belonging nowhere, which could lead to identity fragmentation. On the other hand, viewed from a different perspective, being between worlds may be considered as having footholds on both banks and therefore belonging to two worlds at once. One not only has less but also enjoys more. What is interesting is that Fourth Jane entirely experiences the two aspects of being between worlds, and the two aspects seem to be a linear procession from belonging to nowhere to owning both worlds. This is a path to epiphany. The space of alienation and the interstitial position between worlds become the space of self-liberation and self-exploration. Also, in the context of globalization and internationalization, not only the role of Asian American studies but the migrating subjects are going through an identity shift. The duality of the between-world condition and the hyphenated identity definitely need to be reexamined in dealing with narratives by Asians in exile. The traditional negotiation of being between “two” worlds and the embarrassment of hyphenated identity now seem to be limited and inconvincible while we read works of Asian immigrating writers. More and more critics have attempted to redefine the place of these hyphenated Asians, and to describe them in different ways. Sau-ling Wong, for instance, uses the term “denationalization” to explain the easing of cultural national concerns and the shifting from a domestic to a diasporic perspective. Shirley Geok-lin Lim in her essay “Immigration and Diaspora” employs the categories of “immigrant and diasporic” to view U.S. minority literature and cosmopolitan, metropolitan literature (290). These different perspectives could be a help for us to read the narratives of Asian immigrant writers of recent decades without identifying them as merely conventional ethnic minority and immigrants. As an immigrant narrative read within the parameters of Chinese American literature, the transnational and global constituents embedded in the novel can be neglected easily; thus in the concluding chapter, I attempt to discuss whether it is possible to view Chuang’s Crossings as a “global narrative,” with the hope to carve out a different way to read Chinese immigrant literature. In dealing with narratives by Asians in the diaspora, Eleanor Ty contends that “global novelists” or “global writing” is a more accurate term. Crossings, like the global narratives, highlights movement, instability, and the importance of standpoint or location. To a certain extent, it reveals the way transportation/moving, transnational crossing and globalization has shifted and changed the meaning and the signifier “Asian American” or “Asian European.” What I am also interested in looking at in the final section is narratives by Asians in the diaspora whose works fall outside of this hyphenated paradigm of Asian-plus-adopted-country. In the last few decades, Asians in the diaspora have produced books and films which deal not only with immigration or being caught “between worlds” but also with transnational mobility and exile. They contribute to the creation of what D. N. Rodowick calls a “globalized cosmopolitan public sphere,” a “contradictory and heterogeneous transnational space” (14). He argues that “postmodern forces of globalization have shifted or, more precisely multiplied and complicated centers of power so as to diminish the forms of self-identity conveyed or constructed by nationality” (14). Thus mobile identities and mobile citizens, including “expatriate intellectual” and the “new cosmopolitans,” emerge out. Chuang Hua’s Crossings does deal with questions of identity and subjectivity of the Asian subject, but it does not limit the subject in the adopted America or in the native China respectively, but relocates the subject in the suspension and duration of different continents. Chuang in a way brings a global perspective to the otherwise narrowly defined parameters of hyphenated identities of Asian American or Chinese American. I am not arguing for an abolition of the label Asian American or the Asian-plus-adopted-country paradigm per se. What I want to call attention to in this final section is the fluidity of subjectivity and positions available to Asian Americans. Stressing the unstable and cosmopolitan identity aspects of the novel is another way of pointing out the transnational, transcultural, and fluid potential that I think liberating in Crossings and in works by Chinese American or Asian American authors.

The aims of the present study were to examine whether Asian American youth experience disparities in quality of life (QL) compared with Hispanic, African American, and white youth in the general population and to what extent socioeconomic status (SES) mediates any disparities among these racial/ethnic groups. Data were obtained from the Healthy Passages study, in which 4,972 Asian American (148; 3%), Hispanic (1,813; 36%), African American (1,755; 35%), and white (1,256; 25%) fifth-graders were enrolled in a population-based, cross-sectional survey conducted in three U.S. metropolitan areas. Youth reported their own QL using the PedsQL and supplemental scales. Parents reported youth's overall health status as well as parent's education and household income level. Asian American youth experienced worse status than white youth for three of 10 QL and well-being measures, better status than Hispanic youth on six measures, and better status than African American youth on three measures. However, the observed advantages for Asian American youth over Hispanic and African American youth disappeared when the marked SES differences that are also present among these racial/ethnic groups were taken into account. In contrast, the differences between Asian American and white youth remained after adjusting for SES. These findings suggest that the disparities in QL that favor white youth over Asian American youth exist independent of SES and warrant further examination. In contrast, the QL differences that favor Asian American over Hispanic and African American youth may be partly explained by SES. Interpretations are limited by the heterogeneity existing among Asian Americans.

Asian Americans’ incorporation into American society is structured by interactions with a racial hierarchy that presents greater barriers for some ethnic groups more than others. The racialized assimilation framework predicts that experiences of discrimination shape incorporation into US society. This study investigates the impact of discrimination on the importance placed on three identities—racial, ethnic, American identity—relative to indicators of structural assimilation. Using the post-election wave of the 2016 National Asian American Survey ( N = 3923), we estimate multivariable models to explore the centrality of racial, ethnic, and American identity among an ethnically diverse sample of Asian Americans. Regardless of ethnic group, a large majority deem American as a central identity, with greater variation in race and ethnicity centrality. Discriminatory encounters increased centrality of racial and American identity; meanwhile, educational attainment drives down the centrality of racial identity, though exerting no impact on American identity centrality. Ethnicity moderates these relationships as discrimination enhances racial identity centrality for Koreans, Indians, and Japanese but drives down racial centrality for Chinese adults. Findings reveal that racialized encounters are a distinctive component of the assimilation process resulting in variable expressions of identity among Asian Americans, revealing identity variation across Asian American ethnic groups.

Untangling the Myth of the Model Minority

A Study of Paradigms and Theoretical Key Words of Asian American Literary Criticism

Insurgency and Asian American Studies in the Time of Black Lives Matter Justin Leroy (bio) Peter Liang has the distinction of being one of approximately a dozen police officers convicted of murder or manslaughter for killing a civilian while on duty since 2005. Liang's victim was Akai Gurley, a black man shot dead after Liang fired his weapon into an empty stairwell of the East New York public housing complex where Gurley lived. A New York Supreme Court justice eventually reduced Liang's charge to criminally negligent homicide and declined to sentence him to serve time in prison. However, the initial charge of second-degree manslaughter could have sent Liang away for fifteen years. Liang was the only NYPD officer convicted in an on-duty shooting in well over a decade; the question of whether he was a racial scapegoat soon emerged. Asian American activists in New York City and beyond mobilized in defense of Liang, in what New York Times staff writer Jay Caspian Kang called "the most pivotal moment in the Asian-American community since the Rodney King riots" more than two decades earlier.1 In response, many young, progressive Asian Americans engaged their families and communities about issues of police brutality and the importance of Black Lives Matter. The authors of a widely translated "Letter for Black Lives" explained that the constant threat of violence black Americans face is not the same as other forms of discrimination, and made the case that the (always incomplete) civil rights protections Asian Americans do enjoy is in large part due to black-led freedom struggles.2 The letter was a tremendous show of solidarity, and served as a template for other groups, such as Latinos and second-generation Africans, to discuss antiblackness with their families as well. Still, the letter is fraught with old tropes. It draws too sharp a distinction between black and Asian racialization, as when the authors write, "It's true [End Page 279] we face discrimination … but for the most part, nobody thinks 'dangerous criminal' when we are walking down the street." Many South Asian, Muslim, and Arab Americans are in fact considered "dangerous" while walking down the street, boarding a plane, or speaking Arabic or Urdu in public. The letter concludes by referencing the American Dream: "The American Dream that we seek is a place where all Americans can live without fear of police violence." It ultimately offers a vision of justice that reinforces discrete forms of racialization, always looking inward toward the nation. But the power of Asian American studies in this moment is not in reconciling narratives of antiblack racism with Asian migration to the United States for the purpose of pressing the nation to uphold its foundational values of colorblind liberty and justice for all. Rather, considering Black Lives Matter through the lens of Asian American studies should shift our gaze to the never-ending wars in the Pacific and Middle East, to the insurgent and insurrectionary moments of resistance to U.S. empire. Asian American studies should force us to reject any notion that continued violence against black Americans is aberrant in an otherwise steady march toward justice. Asian American studies allows us to frame antiblackness as part of a conjoined history of domestic and imperial forms of racial governance. An ever-timely reminder that despite being central to U.S. race relations, antiblack violence always has global stakes. Take, for example, former Attorney General Eric Holder's stance that the U.S. government's targeted drone assassination program could be likened to the police officer's permissible use of lethal force in pursuit of a fleeing felon.3 The gulf between foreign war and domestic policing is bridged by the racialized procedures of state-administered death. Moon-Ho Jung has argued that despite the field's coalescence around histories of migration and exclusion, Asian American history is still wedded to national frameworks and imaginaries. Jung suggests that instead of advocating simply for national inclusion, Asian American history "has the radical potential to dislodge nationalist narratives and, at base, to expose and critique the racial and imperial formations that have made the conception of the United States possible in the...