Asian American Studies Research Articles

Dr. Ling-Chi Wang reflections on Lau v. Nichols (1974): Bilingual education, language rights, and political activism

ABSTRACT Born in Xiamen, China in 1938, Dr. Ling-Chi Wang was the founder of Chinese for Affirmative Action, an organization focused on affirmative action in employment, representation of the Chinese in politics, voting, and language rights. He is also a Professor Emeritus of Asian American Studies at the University of California Berkeley. Ling-Chi established the Asian American Studies program at Berkeley, teaching its first course in 1969. In this paper, Ling-Chi shares his perspectives on the long history of Chinese discrimination dating back to the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and his years as a political activist during the 1960s to the present in San Francisco’s Chinatown. His role in community organizing was pivotal in the events leading up to this pivotal U.S. Supreme Court case. Ling Chi’s reflections on activism and linguistic justice documents his imprint on the this language rights case that has shaped US educational language policies for the last fifty years.

The Chinese Freedom Schools: Historicizing and intersecting Lau with Brown

AbstractThe Chinese of Chinatown, San Francisco largely opposed the city-wide racial integration plan that would bus their children across the city beginning in 1971. Claiming that it was a violation of their language rights, a need for cultural preservation and continued autonomy from the San Francisco that had long excluded them, Chinatown instituted its own school system called the Chinese Freedom Schools. With this boycott of the public schools, the Chinese were constituted as oppositional to the aims of racial integration, searing constructions of them as being pro-White, anti-Black, and separatist. Yet, such a simplistic and binary argument omits the long history of exclusion including employment, schooling, housing, and voting discrimination as evidenced by the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882–1965), the only law to exclude a specifically named ethnolinguistic group. To historicize and understand the Chinese Freedom Schools, I analyze this phenomenon using a racial matrix where Asians have long occupied a liminal, in-between space as perpetually foreign, unassimilable, and as a suspect class. Drawing from the theories and concepts of LangCrit, raciolinguistic ideologies and Asian American studies, I examine how agents, institutions, the press, and policies imposed, assumed, or negotiated specific identities of the Chinese during the development, implementation, and dissolution of the Chinese Freedom Schools. I analyze how the Chinese were constructed as uncooperative, creating a competitive cleavage among Asians and Blacks, while dismissing the centrality of White families who largely moved out of the system, avoiding critique. Implications for language-in-education policy are proposed for Lau’s 50th anniversary.

Pathways between childhood mistreatment/victimization, posttraumatic stress, and lifetime substance use disorders among Latinx nationwide.

Childhood mistreatment (CM)/victimization, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and lifetime substance-use disorders (LT-SUD) are major behavioral health concerns. Their associations were established in mainstream populations but remain under-investigated in Latinx Americans. This study aimed to model the mediating effect of PTSD in the link between CM and LT-SUD among Latinx Americans. Using a nationally representative sample (N = 2,554) from the National Latinx and Asian American Study, three path models were performed for the whole-group, U.S.-born, and foreign-born Latinx (aged 18 or over), controlling for known predictors for Latinx' mental health. Latinx reported high rates of childhood physical (32%) and sexual (11.8%) abuse. Latinx subgroups significantly varied in educational attainment, LT-SUD, income, English proficiency, and self-reported discrimination. A fully constrained multiple group path analysis demonstrated direct effects of childhood physical mistreatment (CPM) and childhood sexual mistreatment to lifetime PTSD; PTSD significantly mediated the relationship between CPM with LT-SUD. No significant differences in path coefficients were observed among the Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican subgroups. Findings suggest that CPM may contribute to using substance to avoid physical and emotional pain, which lends support for the self-medication hypothesis. Latinx who were traumatized by both physical and sexual abuse are more likely to use substances as a negative coping strategy. The study underscores the need for assessing the role of substance use as a coping mechanism for Latinx individuals who have experienced childhood traumatic victimization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

At the gate to Australia’s heavenly peace: Asian racialization and Australia’s Tiananmen Chinese

ABSTRACT This paper considers the racialization of Asians in Australia through the dialectic of the “yellow peril” and “model minority”. It uses the specific historical case study of People’s Republic of China nationals in Australia at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre (1989) who were ultimately given permanent residence. Through analysis of archival sources and Australia’s print media in this period (1989–1993), the article identifies how the Tiananmen Chinese were at once characterized as educated, hard-working and worthy additions to the Australian nation (model minority), while also appearing as a threat to the order and integrity of the immigration system (yellow peril). The article draws on Asian American theorist Colleen Lye’s argument about the economistic character of Asian racial form. By using her framework, I suggest the value of deepening engagements with Asian American studies in examining the racialization of Asians in Australia.

Examining Acculturative Stress and Copings Among Korean Immigrant Parents of Children with Developmental Disabilities

ABSTRACT This study seeks to (a) examine the relationship among demographic variables of Korean immigrant parents of children with developmental disabilities (DDs), (b) predict which demographic characteristics impact acculturative stress, and (c) investigate the effect of coping strategies while controlling for those demographics. Korean immigrant parents of children with DDs who reside in the United States (n = 64) completed modified versions of the acculturative stress scale from the National Latino Asian American Study (NLAAS), and coping pattern scale from the Coping Health Inventory for Parents (CHIP). Measures were translated into Korean. The hierarchical multiple regression found that the country where the participants attained their highest level of education, coping patterns for maintaining social support, and psychological well-being on positive self-esteem were significant variables at predicting the level of acculturative stress. The recognition of cultural characteristics and cultural sensitivity to support Korean immigrant parents were identified as implications for research and practices. Further discussion of the findings and limitations are provided.

A systematic review/meta-analysis of prevalence and incidence rates illustrates systemic underrepresentation of individuals racialized as Asian and/or Asian-American in ADRD research.

We investigate Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD) prevalence, incidence rate, and risk factors in individuals racialized as Asian and/or Asian-American and assess sample representation. Prevalence, incidence rate, risk factors, and heterogeneity of samples were assessed. Random-effects meta-analysis was conducted, generating pooled estimates. Of 920 records across 14 databases, 45 studies were included. Individuals racialized as Asian and/or Asian-American were mainly from Eastern and Southern Asia, had higher education, and constituted a smaller sample relative to non-Hispanic white cohorts. The average prevalence was 10.9%, ranging from 0.4% to 46%. The average incidence rate was 20.03 (12.01-33.8) per 1000 person-years with a range of 75.19-13.59 (12.89-14.33). Risk factors included physiological, genetic, psychological, behavioral, and social factors. This review underscores the systemic underrepresentation of individuals racialized as Asian and/or Asian-American in ADRD research and the need for inclusive approaches accounting for culture, language, and immigration status. HIGHLIGHTS: There is considerable heterogeneity in the prevalence of ADRD among studies of Asian-Americans. There is limited data on group-specific risk factors for ADRD among Asian-Americans. The average prevalence of (ADRD) among Asian-Americans was found to be 7.4%, with a wide range from 0.5% to 46%.

Yellow Techno-Peril: The ‘Clash of Civilizations’ and anti-Chinese racial rhetoric in the US–China AI arms race

The rhetoric of an ‘AI arms race’ between the United States and China has become increasingly prominent over the past 5 years, despite warnings that it is unnecessarily polarising and undermines safe and ethical artificial intelligence (AI) development. However, existing critiques of the AI arms race narrative engage only sparingly with the racialised dimensions of this discourse. In this article, I draw on the rich theoretical insights of Asian American and Asian diaspora studies to show how the AI arms race narrative is deeply racialised in two key ways. First, I show how the rhetoric of an AI arms race builds upon the myth of a ‘Clash of Civilizations’ between the West and the East. This civilisational rhetoric constitutes China and the United States as distinct and mutually opposed cultural entities, thus foreclosing the possibility of more peaceful and cooperative alternatives to the AI arms race. Second, I demonstrate how the US–China AI arms race specifically draws on previous racialised configurations of anti-Asian sentiment, such as techno-Orientalism and the Yellow Peril. I coin the term Yellow Techno-Peril to connote how older European and Americans fears of being overrun or controlled by China are reproduced in the AI arms race. I close by offering recommendations to key stakeholders such as policymakers, decisionmakers, journalists and media organisations as to how they can mitigate and avoid the racialised rhetoric of an AI arms race between the United States and China.

Racist Intimacies; or, The Femme Alter Ego and Her Retribution

Cultural depictions of Asian/white miscegenation have long been a source of fascination for scholars within Asian American and sexuality studies. Such a long-standing interest has not only provided key insights into the Orientalist structure of racialized sexuality, but it has also kept our sights set, perhaps too set, on deciphering the Asian woman both in the context of romance and as an object of desire. This essay recasts the narrative of Asian/white sexuality as one of minoritarian retribution, making the argument that insofar as Asian femininity forms the object of racist desires, it can also function as the basis for feminist revenge. The author contemplates racial fetishism through twenty-first-century feminist cultural production, namely the work of mixed-race artists Chanel Matsunami Govreau and Maya Mackrandilal, showing how neoliberal multiculturalism has become further embedded within the infrastructure of everyday encounters, giving rise to something we might call the erotic life of anti-racism.

Journeys of Three Asian American Teachers: Uplifting Asian American Experiences in the Classroom

Three Asian American teachers/teacher educators apply AsianCrit and culturally sustaining pedagogy to honor the history and vision of Asian American studies from the classroom.

Lessons Learned From TranslateCovid, a Multilingual Online Resource Hub for Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities and Beyond.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated health disparities among immigrant communities. Delivering accurate information and addressing misinformation on protective measures and vaccination to linguistically disadvantaged groups was critical for mitigating the effects of the pandemic. One group that was especially vulnerable to miscommunication about COVID-19 was non-native English-speaking immigrants. To address these disparities, the Asian American Studies Center and the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, partnered to create a multilingual resource hub, TranslateCovid.org, to disseminate credible and reliable information about COVID-19 safety measures, the science behind the vaccines, and vaccine safety. We identified >1300 verified resources in 60 languages from government, academic, and nonprofit organizations and reposted them on the TranslateCovid website. We also developed public service announcement videos on handwashing, use of face masks, and social distancing in 10 languages and a fact sheet for frequently asked questions in 20 languages. We used a participatory approach to develop strategies for disseminating these resources. We discuss lessons learned, including strategies for forming government, community, and academic partnerships to support the timely development and dissemination of information. We conclude with a discussion on the unique role of universities in promoting equitable access to public health resources among immigrant communities in times of crisis.

Camptown Dwelling: Environment and Survival in Memories of My Ghost Brother

Abstract: The representation of environmental injustice in Heinz Insu Fenkl's novel Memories of My Ghost Brother (1996) has yet to be examined. This neglect suggests a need to open up the dialogue between Fenkl's work, which is relatively invisible beyond Asian American and postcolonial studies, and ecocriticism. Memories of My Ghost Brother shows that the impoverished, noxious, and dangerous conditions and pervasive diseases in Korean camptowns are socially engineered by the United States-Republic of Korea neocolonial system that on the one hand disregards camptowns' infrastructural needs and on the other hand allows the US military to wreak environmental damage with impunity. Specifically, the novel portrays pervasive dust, flooding sewage, the noise from US military activities, and the dangerous live ammunition left by the US military after their training. Without reducing camptown residents to mere victims, the novel also depicts the survival strategies they have adopted. The novel further situates camptowns within the context of the ongoing environmental atrocities committed by the US military across Asia. Fenkl's depictions of the dire situation in camptowns and the toxic legacies from the atomic bomb and Agent Orange challenge the narrative of American benevolence in Korea.

Disability, Space, and Racial Injustice: Life Writing at Angel Island Immigration Station, 1910–1940

Abstract This study integrates race and disability into a literary-historical analysis of the mostly anonymous poetry composed by Chinese migrants and inscribed onto the walls of the men's barracks of the US Immigration Station at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, 1910–1940. Scholarship in Asian American and Asian diaspora studies has approached this body of work as a modern reinvention of traditional Chinese poetic forms within a US context. This study considers the men's barracks a protest space created under disabling conditions of confinement, and it demonstrates how Angel Island detainees critiqued the racialized and ableist systems of social control that operated at the station. The poets attest to undergoing invasive imperial regimes of bodily inspection and medicalized racial exclusion, and they document lived experiences of chronic illness, depression, and the anguished temporality of detention space. As corpus of disabled life writing by early Asian American and Asian diaspora writers, Angel Island poetry offers wider access to non-English historical vocabularies of disability as well as environmental and holistic understandings of embodied conditions beyond Western diagnostic models. As a built environmental archive and a National Historic Landmark, Angel Island is a significant cultural site for exploring how race and disability operate concurrently as social constructions.

Premigratory experiences with Civil War violence and social trust

AbstractDo experiences with civil war violence affect an individual's level of social trust? The literature on this topic suggests that being a victim of violence or being involved in violence has a profound effect on an individual's political behavior in the new host country. However, what has not been explored is how experiences with civil war and violence impact levels of social trust among immigrants. Building on prior research on premigratory experience and literature on experience with violence, we intend to determine if the premigratory experiences with violence in an immigrant's country of origin affect whether social trust is increased or decreased in an immigrant's country of residence. We investigate this question using the National Latino and Asian American Study. We find that immigrants who had experienced civil war as unarmed civilians and were persecuted due to their political beliefs were less likely to acculturate to the host country. Participation in combat also tended to reduce acculturation but did not affect social trust.

Playing Filipino: Racial Display, Resistance, and the Filipino Rough Riders in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West

Abstract: This article examines the intersection of empire, national identity, performance, and cultural representation through an analysis of the Filipino Rough Riders in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West . Drawing on historical material—including newspaper articles and illustrations, photographs, and Wild West ephemera—this article explores how and why Filipino performers were included in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and how they were represented by the exposition, the press, and the performers themselves. It develops the concept of “playing Filipino,” a phrase that adapts and alters the notion of “playing Indian,” to capture the interactive process of performing not only racialized types for white-dominated audiences and institutions, but also the resistant and creative activity of embodying Filipino-ness through self-crafted style and aesthetic appearance. This study advances transnational Asian American studies by presenting new ways of thinking about turn of the twentieth-century Filipino performers and their relation to US imperialism through cultural institutions and popular entertainment like traveling Wild West shows, and it also expands American West scholarship by considering how Asian subjects figured into constructions of US domestic and overseas frontiers during times of war.

Examining External and Internal Acculturative Factors: Cuban-Born Women’s Experience of Well-Being in the U.S.

Objective: This study investigates the influence of acculturative stress on the mental well-being of Cuban-born women and Latina immigrants, emphasizing their distinctive experiences. Methods: Utilizing data from the National Latino Asian American Study (NLAAS), a comprehensive nationwide mental health investigation among Latino and Asian Americans, this study examined 264 Cuban women (average age: 58) who migrated to the United States and live in south Florida. The study employed Family Stress Management (FSM) framework and Bekteshi et al.’s Contextual Influence on Acculturative Stress (CIAS) framework to scrutinize the interplay of contextual factors and individual characteristics impacting adolescents’ psychological distress. Results: The findings revealed several noteworthy associations. Higher levels of church attendance, challenges in visiting family overseas, and perceived racial discrimination correlated with elevated stress levels. Furthermore, the age at which individuals immigrated was positively linked to increased stress (b = 0.18; p = 0.04), indicating that older Cuban immigrants experienced greater psychological distress upon their arrival in the United States. Additionally, higher levels of conflict between family and cultural values, as well as intensified religious beliefs, were associated with elevated distress levels. Conclusion: This study underscores the intricate interplay of diverse contextual factors in shaping the mental health and well-being of Cuban-born women. The insights derived from this research have implications for the development of tailored interventions and support systems, aiming to address the unique needs of this population.

Learning to Speak Chinese: Defining the Sino-American Film Paradigm

This article proposes a new paradigm, Sino-American film, that is centered on Chinese language in American films. Sino-American films comprise two generations. The First Generation includes Pushing Hands (1993), Take Out (2004), and Saving Face (2004) and is characterized by independent production, limited distribution, and creation during a period when Asian Americans were rarely represented on film. The Second Generation includes The Farewell (2019), Tigertail (2019), Shang-Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings (2021), and Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) and is characterized by a Hollywood production model, widespread distribution across streaming services, and creation during a period of growing Asian American cultural representation. Sino-American films negotiate both Chinese-language film and Hollywood by focusing on overlooked characters— Chinese-language-speaking Americans. This article contributes to conversations in Chinese film studies and Asian American studies by bringing Asian American film into exchanges with three Chinese film studies paradigms: transnational cinema, Chinese-language film, and Sinophone film. This cross pollination uncovers new areas for further study. Sino-American film demonstrates the importance of Sino-American language, ethnicity, and culture within the subsuming category of Asian American film. Furthermore, pairing Sino-American films with Chinese film studies uncovers a new category of Chinese-language film outside assumed contexts and paradigms.

Work Will Not Save Us: An Asian American Crip Manifesto

Drawing together disability justice, Asian American studies, and feminist/ queer-of-color labor analysis, this collaboratively authored essay forwards an anti-work manifesto shaped by our lived experiences as sick, disabled and queer Asian American scholars laboring in the academic-industrial complex. This essay offers a two-part intervention: first, it aims to expand nascent conversations on disability politics and its relationship to racial capitalism, and second, it puts forth a critique of the Asian American emphasis on achievement as an instrument of belonging and potential inoculation against racialized violence. It also unfolds in two parts: first, a section on why we refuse work, and second, a section on how to perform this refusal.
 
 As we come to this essay from our respective positionalities in contingent, tenure-stream, and tenured academic loci, as well as from our shared investments in feminist and queer frameworks, the first section mobilizes feminist and queer disability analysis to interrogate the fraught investments in work shared across Asian American and Disability Studies, addressing the complexities of gendered, contingent, care, and service work within the academic landscape (and particularly as we have experienced them). The second section offers a survival guide for navigating the labor demands placed on racialized, queer, and/ or disabled scholars, channeling Asian American rage to move beyond saying “no” and toward saying “fuck off.”

“Urgently Needed to Protect Asian American Children and Families”: The Social Movement for Asian American Studies at K‐12 Grades

The national movement for Asian American Studies (AASs) curriculum at the K‐12 level has burgeoned during the COVID‐19 pandemic and the subsequent surge of anti‐Asian hate. Seventeen states proposed legislation requiring AAS content in their public schools and ten states have now mandated it. Using case studies of two states, Illinois and New Jersey, this article details how community activists and elected legislators framed their campaigns to successfully pass their bills. In both states, the campaigns utilized diagnostic frames from the broader Asian American movement. However, they also incorporated and developed prognostic frames and motivational frames more resonant with the current moment. Notably, stakeholders focused on organizing around a winnable issue, with an emphasis on racial bullying in New Jersey and multiracial solidarity and inclusion in Illinois.

Asian American Experience (The American Mosaic)

The Asian American Experience (AAE) database (Academic Version) is part of ABC-CLIO’s American Mosaic series. A resource primarily for the undergraduate student, AAE offers an “interdisciplinary approach” to the study and understanding of Asian Americans within a historical and cultural context. With a variety of sources including over 1,200 primary sources, AAE especially benefits those beginning their research on this specific population group.

Cripping the Archive: Analyzing Archival Disorder in the Yamashita Family Archives and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Letters to Memory

This article outlines a crip archival analysis of Karen Tei Yamashita’s creative family memoir Letters to Memory (2017) and the separate Yamashita Family Archives; the analysis revolves around the concept of disorder. The book and digital archives move the daily lived experience of incarceration out of chronological order, encouraging new connections across a massive collection of materials: letters, photographs, federal surveillance documents, paintings, sermons, and other ephemera surrounding World War II Japanese American incarceration. Their respective acts of assembling and retelling destabilize the dominant narrative of a resolved family or national trauma to reflect divergent embodied experiences of distress and disability effected by racial debilitation. Offering concentric analysis of textual and archival reordering via Asian American studies, disability studies, and digital humanities, this article adds alternative dimensions to the ongoing legacy of incarceration by inviting readers to create new constellations of meaning through examining temporal and embodied disorder. Reading the physical book and digital archives together also acts as a model for how literary studies scholars might complicate our attention to embodiment beyond narrative analysis, by thinking about disability and madness in the design and structure of texts and digital media. Through cripping the archive, the author calls for a reconceptualization of mad and disabled bodyminds as not only content to be examined, but also users and creators whose disorder animates alternative ways of knowing personal and state violence.