Subject Guides: Asian American and Pacific Islander Anti-Discrimination Resources: Further Reading &amp; Research Suggestions

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For additional readings beyond our collection check out A reading list to understand anti-Asian racism in America.

Asian American Sexual Politics: The Construction of Race, Gender, and Sexuality by Rosalind S. Chou
ISBN: 9781442209244
Publication Date: 2012-06-07
"Asian American Sexual Politics explores the topics of beauty, self-esteem, and sexual attraction among Asian Americans. The book draws on sixty in-depth interviews to show how constructions of Asian American gender and sexuality tend to reinforce the social and political dominance for whites, particularly white males, even in the supposed “post-racial” United States.Drawing on established scholarship on the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality, Asian American Sexual Politics shows how power dynamics shape the lives of young Asian Americans today. Asian American women are often constructed as hyper-sexual docile bodies, while Asian American men are often racially “castrated.” The book's interview excerpts show the range of frames through which Asian Americans approach the world, as well as the counter-frames they construct. In the final chapter, author Rosalind S. Chou offers strategies for countering racialized and sexualized oppression. This provocative book shows how persistent racism affects Asian American body image, self-esteem, and intimate relationships."
Asian Americans in Michigan : Voices From the Midwest by Sook Wilkinson and Victor Jew, eds.
ISBN: 9780814339749
Publication Date: 2015
"While the number of Asians in Michigan was small for a good portion of the state’s history, many Asian-derived communities have settled in the area and grown significantly over time. In Asian Americans in Michigan: Voices from the Midwest, editors Sook Wilkinson and Victor Jew have assembled forty-one contributors to give an intimate glimpse into Michigan’s Asian-American communities, creating a fuller picture of these often overlooked groups. Accounts in the collection come from a range of perspectives, including first-generation immigrants, those born in the United States, and third- and fourth-generation Americans of Asian heritage. In five sections, contributors consider the historical and demographic origins of Michigan’s Asian American communities, explore their experiences in memory and legacy keeping, highlight particular aspects of community culture and heritage, and comment on prospects and hopes for the future. This volume’s vibrant mix of contributors trace their ancestries back to East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan), South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan), and Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Hmong). Though each contributor writes from his or her unique set of experiences, Asian Americans in Michigan also reveals universal values and memories held by larger communities. Asian Americans in Michigan makes clear the significant contributions by individuals in many fields—including art, business, education, religion, sports, medicine, and politics—and demonstrates the central role of community organizations in bringing ethnic groups together and preserving memories. Readers interested in Michigan history, sociology, and Asian American studies will enjoy this volume."
Asian American Studies Now: A Critical Reader by Jean Yu-Wen Shen Wu (Editor)
ISBN: 9780813545745
Publication Date: 2010-03-08
"Asian American Studies Now truly represents the enormous changes occurring in Asian American communities and the world, changes that require a reconsideration of how the interdisciplinary field of Asian American studies is defined and taught. This comprehensive anthology, arranged in four parts and featuring a stellar group of contributors, summarizes and defines the current shape of this rapidly changing field, addressing topics such as transnationalism, U.S. imperialism, multiracial identity, racism, immigration, citizenship, social justice, and pedagogy. Jean Yu-wen Shen Wu and Thomas C. Chen have selected essays for the significance of their contribution to the field and their clarity, brevity, and accessibility to readers with little to no prior knowledge of Asian American studies. Featuring both reprints of seminal articles and groundbreaking texts, as well as bold new scholarship, Asian American Studies Now addresses the new circumstances, new communities, and new concerns that are reconstituting Asian America."
At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 by Erika Lee
ISBN: 9780807863138
Publication Date: 2004-01-21
"With the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese laborers became the first group in American history to be excluded from the United States on the basis of their race and class. Lee explores how Chinese exclusion laws not only transformed Chinese American lives, immigration patterns, identities, and families but also recast the United States into a 'gatekeeping nation.'"
Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking by Michael Keevak
ISBN: 9780691140315
Publication Date: 2011-05-08
"In their earliest encounters with Asia, Europeans almost uniformly characterized the people of China and Japan as white. This was a means of describing their wealth and sophistication, their willingness to trade with the West, and their presumed capacity to become Christianized. But by the end of the seventeenth century the category of whiteness was reserved for Europeans only. When and how did Asians become "yellow" in the Western imagination? Looking at the history of racial thinking, Becoming Yellow explores the notion of yellowness and shows that this label originated not in early travel texts or objective descriptions, but in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scientific discourses on race."
Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America by Aihwa Ong
ISBN: 9780520937161
Publication Date: 2003-09-04
"Fleeing the murderous Pol Pot regime, Cambodian refugees arrive in America as at once the victims and the heroes of America's misadventures in Southeast Asia; and their encounters with American citizenship are contradictory as well. Service providers, bureaucrats, and employers exhort them to be self-reliant, individualistic, and free, even as the system and the culture constrain them within terms of ethnicity, race, and class. Buddha Is Hiding tells the story of Cambodian Americans experiencing American citizenship from the bottom-up."
The Burden of White Supremacy : Containing Asian Migration in the British Empire and the United States by David C. Atkinson
ISBN: 9781469630267
Publication Date: 2017-01-09
"From 1896 to 1924, motivated by fears of an irresistible wave of Asian migration and the possibility that whites might be ousted from their position of global domination, British colonists and white Americans instituted stringent legislative controls on Chinese, Japanese, and South Asian immigration. Historians of these efforts typically stress similarity and collaboration between these movements, but in this compelling study, David C. Atkinson highlights the differences in these campaigns and argues that the main factor unifying these otherwise distinctive drives was the constant tensions they caused. Drawing on documentary evidence from the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand, Atkinson traces how these exclusionary regimes drew inspiration from similar racial, economic, and strategic anxieties, but nevertheless developed idiosyncratically in the first decades of the twentieth century.Arguing that the so-called white man's burden was often white supremacy itself, Atkinson demonstrates how the tenets of absolute exclusion--meant to foster white racial, political, and economic supremacy--only inflamed dangerous tensions that threatened to undermine the British Empire, American foreign relations, and the new framework of international cooperation that followed the First World War."
The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority by Ellen D. Wu
ISBN: 0691168024
Publication Date: 2015-12-29
"The Color of Success tells of the astonishing transformation of Asians in the United States from the yellow peril to model minorities--peoples distinct from the white majority but lauded as well-assimilated, upwardly mobile, and exemplars of traditional family values--in the middle decades of the twentieth century. As Ellen Wu shows, liberals argued for the acceptance of these immigrant communities into the national fold, charging that the failure of America to live in accordance with its democratic ideals endangered the country's aspirations to world leadership. Weaving together myriad perspectives, Wu provides an unprecedented view of racial reform and the contradictions of national belonging in the civil rights era."
Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown by Nayan Shah
ISBN: 9780520935532
Publication Date: 2001-10-29
"Contagious Divides charts the dynamic transformation of representations of Chinese immigrants from medical menace in the nineteenth century to model citizen in the mid-twentieth century. Examining the cultural politics of public health and Chinese immigration in San Francisco, this book looks at the history of racial formation in the U.S. by focusing on the development of public health bureaucracies. Nayan Shah notes how the production of Chinese difference and white, heterosexual norms in public health policy affected social lives, politics, and cultural expression. Public health authorities depicted Chinese immigrants as filthy and diseased, as the carriers of such incurable afflictions as smallpox, syphilis, and bubonic plague."
Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation-State by Robert Chang
ISBN: 9780814772393
Publication Date: 2000-10-01
"Does Asian American denote an ethnic or racial identification? Is a person of mixed ancestry, the child of Euro- and Asian American parents, Asian American? What does it mean to refer to first generation Hmong refugees and fifth generation Chinese Americans both as Asian American'. In Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation State, Robert Chang examines the current discourse on race and law and the implications of postmodern theory and affirmative action-all of which have largely excluded Asian Americans-in order to develop a theory of critical Asian American legal studies. Demonstrating that the ongoing debate surrounding multiculturalism and immigration in the U.S. is really a struggle over the meaning of America, Chang reveals how the construction of Asian American-ness has become a necessary component in stabilizing a national American identity-- a fact Chang criticizes as harmful to Asian Americans. Defining the many borders that operate in positive and negative ways to construct America as we know it, Chang analyzes the position of Asian Americans within America's black/white racial paradigm, how the family operates as a stand-in for race and nation, and how the figure of the immigrant embodies a central contradiction in allegories of America. Has profound political implications for race relations in the new century."
The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority by Madeline Y. Hsu
ISBN: 9781400866373
Publication Date: 2015-04-27
"Conventionally, US immigration history has been understood through the lens of restriction and those who have been barred from getting in. In contrast,The Good Immigrantsconsiders immigration from the perspective of Chinese elites-intellectuals, businessmen, and students-who gained entrance because of immigration exemptions. Exploring a century of Chinese migrations, Madeline Hsu looks at how the model minority characteristics of many Asian Americans resulted from US policies that screened for those with the highest credentials in the most employable fields, enhancing American economic competitiveness. The earliest US immigration restrictions targeted Chinese people but exempted students as well as individuals who might extend America's influence in China. Western-educated Chinese such as Madame Chiang Kai-shek became symbols of the US impact on China, even as they patriotically advocated for China's modernization. World War II and the rise of communism transformed Chinese students abroad into refugees, and the Cold War magnified the importance of their talent and training. As a result, Congress legislated piecemeal legal measures to enable Chinese of good standing with professional skills to become citizens. Pressures mounted to reform American discriminatory immigration laws, culminating with the 1965 Immigration Act. Filled with narratives featuring such renowned Chinese immigrants as I. M. Pei,The Good Immigrantsexamines the shifts in immigration laws and perceptions of cultural traits that enabled Asians to remain in the United States as exemplary, productive Americans."
Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education by Özlem Sensoy; Robin DiAngelo; James A. Banks (Series edited by); Özlem Sensoy
ISBN: 0807758612
Publication Date: 2017-07-28
"... the book addresses the most common stumbling blocks to understanding social justice. This comprehensive resource includes new features such as a chapter on intersectionality and classism; discussion of contemporary activism (Black Lives Matter, Occupy, and Idle No More); material on White Settler societies and colonialism; pedagogical supports related to "common social patterns" and 'vocabulary to practice using'..."
Killing the Model Minority Stereotype: Asian American Counterstories and Complicity by Nicholas D. Hartlep (Editor); Brad J. Porfilio (Editor)
ISBN: 9781681231105
Publication Date: 2015-06-10
"Killing the Model Minority Stereotype comprehensively explores the complex permutations of the Asian model minority myth, exposing the ways in which stereotypes of Asian/Americans operate in the service of racism. Chapters include counter-narratives, critical analyses, and transnational perspectives. This volume connects to overarching projects of decolonization, which social justice educators and practitioners will find useful for understanding how the model minority myth functions to uphold white supremacy and how complicity has a damaging impact in its perpetuation."
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad; Robin DiAngelo (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9781728209807
Publication Date: 2020-01-28
“Based on the viral Instagram challenge that captivated participants worldwide, Me and White Supremacytakes readers on a 28-day journey of how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.”
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
ISBN: 9781620971949
Publication Date: 2020
"In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet, as legal star Michelle Alexander reveals, today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal."
Orientals: Asian Americans in popular culture by Robert G. Lee
ISBN: 9781566396585
Publication Date: 1999-03-22
"Sooner or later every Asian American must deal with the question 'Where do you come from?' It is probably the most familiar if least aggressive form of racism. It is a tip-off to the persistent notion that people of Asian ancestry are not real Americans, that 'Orientals' never really stop being loyal to their foreign homeland, no matter how long they or their families have been in this country. Confronting the cultural stereotypes that have been attached to Asian Americans over the last 150 years, Robert G. Lee seizes the label 'Oriental' and asks where it came from."
Race, Nation, and Refuge: The Rhetoric of Race in Asian American Citizenship Cases by Doug Coulson
ISBN: 9781438466613
Publication Date: 2017-10-01
"Explores the role of rhetoric and the racial classification of Asian American immigrants in the early twentieth century. From 1870 to 1940, racial eligibility for naturalization in the United States was limited to “free white persons” and “aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent,” and many interpreted these restrictions to reflect a policy of Asian exclusion based on the conclusion that Asians were neither white nor African. Because the distinction between white and Asian was considerably unstable, however, those charged with the interpretation and implementation of the naturalization act faced difficult racial classification questions. Through archival research and a close reading of the arguments contained in the documents of the US Bureau of Naturalization, especially those documents that discussed challenges to racial eligibility for naturalization, Doug Coulson demonstrates that the strategy of foregrounding shared external threats to the nation as a means of transcending perceived racial divisions was often more important to racial classification than legal doctrine. He argues that this was due to the rapid shifts in the nation's enmities and alliances during the early twentieth century and the close relationship between race, nation, and sovereignty."
Race, Rights, and the Asian American Experience by Angelo N. Ancheta
ISBN: 9780813539782
Publication Date: 2006-11-16
"In Race, Rights, and the Asian American Experience, Angelo N. Ancheta demonstrates how United States civil rights laws have been framed by a black-white model of race that typically ignores the experiences of other groups, including Asian Americans. When racial discourse is limited to antagonisms between black and white, Asian Americans often find themselves in a racial limbo, marginalized or unrecognized as full participants. Ancheta examines legal and social theories of racial discrimination, ethnic differences in the Asian American population, nativism, citizenship, language, school desegregation, and affirmative action."
The Racial Contract by Charles W. Mills
ISBN: 9780801434549
Publication Date: 1997-09-11
"The Racial Contract puts classic Western social contract theory, deadpan, to extraordinary radical use. With a sweeping look at the European expansionism and racism of the last five hundred years, Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged "contract" has shaped a system of global European domination: how it brings into existence "whites" and "non-whites," full persons and sub-persons, how it influences white moral theory and moral psychology; and how this system is imposed on non-whites through ideological conditioning and violence. The Racial Contract argues that the society we live in is a continuing white supremacist state."
Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
ISBN: 9781442276239
Publication Date: 2017-06-09
"Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's acclaimed Racism without Racists documents how, beneath our contemporary conversation about race, there lies a full-blown arsenal of arguments, phrases, and stories that whites use to account for-and ultimately justify-racial inequalities. The fifth edition of this provocative book makes clear that color blind racism is as insidious now as ever. It features new material on our current racial climate, including the Black Lives Matter movement; a significantly revised chapter that examines the Obama presidency, the 2016 election, and Trump's presidency; and a new chapter addressing what readers can do to confront racism-both personally and on a larger structural level."
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo; Michael Eric Dyson (Foreword by)
ISBN: 0807047414
Publication Date: 2018-06-26
"The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality."

Alt-PressWatch - "Showcases unique, independent voices from around 200 respected and cited grassroots newspapers, magazines, and journals - big stories from small sources. Offers a wide range of unfettered, critical coverage of the news and an unmatched, multi-disciplinary resource for researchers seeking an alternative to mainstream, corporate controlled media."

America: History and Life with Full Text - "Covers the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Over 1,700 journals published from as far back as 1910 to the present are included."

Communication & Mass Media Complete - "Incorporates CommSearch (formerly produced by the National Communication Association) and Mass Media Articles Index (formerly produced by Penn State) along with numerous other journals. Coverage of more than 570 journals in the communication and mass media fields, with full-text for more than 450 journals. For significant titles in the field, coverage goes back to their very first issue (as far back as 1915)."

Human Rights Studies Online - "This collection is a research and learning database providing comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010."

JSTOR - "Journal articles from core scholarly journals in the liberal arts and sciences. Coverage extends from the first issue of journals included to 3 - 5 years before the present. Our JSTOR collections include journals in economics, history, ecology, mathematics, statistics, political science, and sociology, as well as in other key fields in the humanities and social sciences."

Peace Research Abstracts - "Covers essential areas related to peace research, including conflict resolution, international affairs, peace psychology, and other areas of key relevance."

Political Science Complete - "Provides full text for more than 530 journals as well as indexing and abstracts for 2,900 journals. Also includes more than 340 full-text reference books and more than 38,000 full-text conference papers. Its coverage consists of topics such as law and legislation, comparative politics, political theory, international relations, humanitarian issues, and non-governmental organizations."

ProQuest Research Library - "ProQuest Research Library includes articles from scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, and newspapers. The broad range of subjects covered includes arts, business, education, general interest, health, humanities, law, military, multicultural, psychology, sciences, social sciences, and women's interests. Included are more than 5,060 titles — over 3,600 in full text — from 1971 to the present."

Race Relations in America - "Race Relations in America contains over 100 hours of audio recordings of speeches, photographs, scrapbooks, survey material, and case studies covering the activities of the Civil Rights Movement, the desegregation process, and other relevant events to the story of race in mid-20th century America."

Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice - "This resource is designed as an important portal for slavery and abolition studies, bringing together documents and collections covering an extensive time period 1490-2007, from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world. Close attention is being given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today."

Asian American and Pacific Islander Anti-Discrimination Resources

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