Asian Studies

As you begin to listen to this book, you will become familiar with all the gods and goddesses of Chinese culture. The historical context will become clear, as well as the institutions, the law, the rules about sexuality, marriage, and children, and so much more. Understanding these aspects of their society before fully becoming engaged in the folklore that was the popular belief at the time is essential to your comprehension of the cultural anecdotes in those tales.

The author at 16 years old was evacuated with her family to an internment camp for Japanese Americans, along with 110,000 other people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast. She faced an indefinite sentence behind barbed wire in crowded, primitive camps. She struggled for survival and dignity, and endured psychological scarring that has lasted a lifetime. This memoir is told from the heart and mind of a woman now nearly eighty years old who experienced the challenges and wounds of her internment at a crucial point in her development as a young adult.

On a warm day in September 2000, a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Zanhua gave birth to twin girls in a small hut nestled in bamboo behind her brother's rural home in China's Hunan province. The twins, Fangfang and Shuangjie, were welcome additions to her young family but also not her first children. Hidden in the hut, they were born under the shadow of China's notorious one-child policy. Fearing the ire of family planning officials, Zanhua and her husband decided to leave one twin in the care of relatives, hoping each toddler on their own might stay under the radar.

On September 15, 1924, Martha Lum and her older sister Berda were barred from attending middle school in Rosedale, Mississippi. The girls were Chinese American and considered by the school to be “colored”; the school was for whites. This event would lead to the first US Supreme Court case to challenge the constitutionality of racial segregation in Southern public schools, an astonishing thirty years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Mainstream perceptions about what it means to be Buddhist in America often whitewash and invisibilize the diverse, inclusive, and intersectional communities that lie at the heart of American Buddhism. Be the Refuge is both critique and celebration, calling out the erasure of Asian-American Buddhists while uplifting the complexity and nuance of their authentic stories and vital, thriving communities. Drawn from in-depth interviews with a pan-ethnic, pan-Buddhist group, Be the Refuge is the first book to center young Asian-American Buddhists' own voices.

When the U.S. government forced 70,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry into internment camps in 1942, it created administrative tribunals to pass judgment on who was loyal and who was disloyal. In American Inquisition, Eric Muller relates the untold story of exactly how military and civilian bureaucrats judged these tens of thousands of American citizens during wartime. Some citizens were deemed loyal and were freed, but one in four was declared disloyal to America and condemned to repressive segregation in the camps or barred from war-related jobs.

After their father's death, Harry, Frank, and Pierce Fukuhara - all born and raised in the Pacific Northwest - moved to Hiroshima, their mother's ancestral home. Eager to go back to his own land - America - Harry returned in the late 1930s. Then came Pearl Harbor. Despite being sent to an internment camp, Harry dutifully volunteered to serve his country. Back in Hiroshima, his brothers, Frank and Pierce, became soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army.

What does it mean to be Asian American? How does our racialization in the United States shape our lives and our worldviews? With candor and care, Ellie Yang Camp, a Taiwanese American educator, offers a set of ideas and frameworks to guide us toward a more nuanced understanding of these questions. Drawing on her experiences and observations from history, conversations with Asian American peers, and lessons derived from other people of color, Camp unpacks the confusing dynamics that underlie anti-Asian stigmas and stereotypes in the US.

Before being struck down by the US Supreme Court in June 2023, affirmative action remained one of the few remaining policy tools to address racial inequalities, revealing peculiar contours of racism and anti-racist strategies in America. Through personal reflective essays for and about her daughter, OiYan Poon looks at how the debate over affirmative action reveals the divergent ways Asian Americans conceive of their identity.

Asian-American Life Stories is a very important audiobook for the study of Asian-Americans in the United States of America. This audiobook contains autobiographical writings by 11 young Asian-American leaders, who represent various segments of the Asian immigrant population in the United States. Many of the autobiographies, therefore, contain very valuable historical and sociological date for understanding the Asian experience in the United States.

A scholar and activist’s brilliant socio-political examination of Asians Americans who refuse to assimilate and instead build their own belonging on their own terms outside of mainstream American institutions, transforming the ways we understand race, class, and citizenship in America.

Have you ever wondered about the origin of the terrifying Wendigo? How about the Philippine shape-shifting vampire? What about the Māori forest spirits? Join award winning podcaster and researcher Kamuela Kaneshiro as he takes you on a thrilling trip through Asia, the Americas, and other fascinating cultures touching the Pacific Ocean. And as you marvel at this captivating assortment of deities, monsters, and historical backdrops, you’re sure to have your imagination sparked by the wonders of the world.

The coal-mining town of Fushun in China’s Northeast is home to a monstrous open pit. First excavated in the early twentieth century, this pit grew like a widening maw over the ensuing decades, as various Chinese and Japanese states endeavored to unearth Fushun’s purportedly “inexhaustible” carbon resources. Today, the depleted mine that remains is a wondrous and terrifying monument to fantasies of a fossil-fueled future and the technologies mobilized in attempts to turn those developmentalist dreams into reality.

Original and expansive, Asian American Histories of the United States is a nearly 200-year history of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the US. Reckoning with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the surge in anti-Asian hate and violence, award-winning historian Catherine Ceniza Choy presents an urgent social history of the fastest growing group of Americans. The book features the lived experiences and diverse voices of immigrants, refugees, US-born Asian Americans, multiracial Americans, and workers from industries spanning agriculture to healthcare.

In this classic book on the meaning of multiculturalism in larger American society, Gary Okihiro explores the significance of Asian American experiences from the perspectives of historical consciousness, race, gender, class, and culture.

Fleeing the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 and fueled by a burning desire for a better life, Apple embarks on a daring journey to pursue her doctoral education in America. With no backup plan, Apple has to make this journey work. But she has no idea that her starting place, Las Cruces, NM, is a quiet desert town—a far cry from the bustling metropolis she envisioned. Anxious, ignorant, broken, lost, and homesick, Apple is also excited, curious, and open-minded. Will she simply survive the fish-out-of-the-water situation many immigrants experience, or will she thrive?

In Western Journeys, Teow Lim Goh charts her journeys immigrating from Singapore and spending the last 15 years living in and exploring the American West. Goh chronicles her lived experiences while building on the longer history of immigrants from Asia during the 19th and 20th centuries, bringing new insights to places, the historical record, and memory.

Did you know that cave dwellers left art on their walls not only to entertain themselves, but also to share their stories? Much of what we know about these prehistoric humans comes from the art they have left behind. This book will discuss prehistoric art in the Asian, European, African, American, and Oceanic regions. Grab a copy today.

A journey back in time, The Golden Mountain is the gripping tale of four generations of Chinese women who live and die under the restrictions of their culture, except for one, the author. Her story tells of growing up in Hong Kong and of her transition to New York City where she struggled to meld the American dream with her ethnic background. Finally, at age 50, she dares to move into the present and understand the true nature of dreams and what it means to live.

On February 19, 1942, following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and Japanese Army successes in the Pacific, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a fateful order. In the name of security, Executive Order 9066 allowed for the summary removal of Japanese aliens and American citizens of Japanese descent from their West Coast homes and their incarceration under guard in camps. Amid the numerous histories and memoirs devoted to this shameful event, FDR's contributions have been seen as negligible.