Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People [Paperback]

The fascinating story of the rise of Asian Americans as a politically and socially influential racial group

This groundbreaking book is about the transformation of Asian Americans from a few small, disconnected, and largely invisible ethnic groups into a self-identified racial group that is influencing every aspect of American society. It explores the junctures that shocked Asian Americans into motion and shaped a new consciousness, including the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, by two white autoworkers who believed he was Japanese; the apartheid-like working conditions of Filipinos in the Alaska canneries; the boycott of Korean American greengrocers in Brooklyn; the Los Angeles riots; and the casting of non-Asians in the Broadway musical Miss Saigon. The book also examines the rampant stereotypes of Asian Americans.

Helen Zia, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, was born in the 1950s when there were only 150,000 Chinese Americans in the entire country, and she writes as a personal witness to the dramatic changes involving Asian Americans.

Written for both Asian Americansthe fastest-growing population in the United Statesand non-Asians,Asian American Dreamsargues that America can no longer afford to ignore these emergent, vital, and singular American people.

Helen Zia, a graduate of Princeton University's first co-educational class, is an award-winning journalist who has covered Asian American communities and political movements for twenty years. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

An ambitious blend of personal and cultural history, a primer on Asian America that covers everything from the history of Asian immigration to the turbulence of the past three decades as the community has gone from silent majority to demanding its place in American society. Ferdinand M. de Leon, The Seattle Times

An important book because it seeks to answer a question that few other popular works pose: Wl'