Customer Reviews

Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

With so many negative reviews of this book, I feel the need to give some context.

About the difficulty of the language: first, those reading this text should note that you will be entering mid-stream into an academic conversation already taking place between marxism, poststructuralism, feminism and Asian American cultural politics (among other strands of thought). Academic language at its best helps us conceptualize in new ways, and like any language, we need to learn it.

Second, as readers we should also be careful to not project what might be our own anti-intellectualism onto the texts we read. There are reasons why this book is a classic Asian American Studies text. Stick with it, and familiarize yourself with the different theoretical frameworks that are woven into it. There are many theoretical and practical insights to be gained from Lowe's work that are relevant to thinking about Asian American cultural politics.

Personally, I feel that Professor Lowe is very insightful about theory, the Asian American experience, colonialism, identity politics, cultural criticism. etc. I learned a lot from her as a student and after reading this book, I continue to learn from her. I think Immigrant Acts deserves a 5 star rating for academic merit.

BUT, it has been 5 years since I taken one of her courses and I have forgotten how jargon filled her language can be. After being away from academia, reading this book was a daunting task. As much as I respect this text, I feel that it is unfortunate that Professor Lowe cannot relate to a general audience. She is definitely (intentionally or unintentionally) catering to fellow scholars. She has a lot to say and offer her reading public. Its too bad that most people can not understand her. I give only one star for writing style and being reader friendly. Sorry, Professor Lowe.

Immigrant Acts performs its own multiple acts of immigration, assimilation, suablternization in sophisticated and probing ways that would unite a Gramscian problematic of class and place with a more professional concern with identity politics in ethnic studies and Asian American racialization patterns. While I might want to argue with the will to theorize and include diverse forms of decolonization and resistance that do not fit this racial calculus of abjected othering, still, this book is an indispensable text of US identity politics in this era of maximal globalization and localization for the Pax Americana. The chapter on beloved T. Cha remains incredibly good, the historicized reminder of immigrant acts of rejection directed against the Chinese then and Mexicans and Vietnamese now haunts any easy vision of US liberal tolerance and multicultural peace. I need this book, Mr. President, even when I hate it and love it and get locked into its hyper-textual terms (one sign of textual power, that, the displacement of the reader). I am no immigrant act myself, just a Scottish Italian half-poet,but am working overtime out here in Asia/Pacific waters off the coast of California and Taiwan and need to study the main moves. My praise is superfluous at this point, and the indigenous struggles go on far from the immigrant acts of assimilation textual resistance. The US nation wobbles, not a bit.

Lowe is clearly a talented scholar with an expansive range of analytical capabilities. Importantly, she shows that Asian American culture reveals the racial contradictions of "American" ideologies that posit such notions of "abstract citizenship" and "abstract labor." Put another way, the Asian American experience cannot be "read" or approached in the same way as the normative white experience. However, this book is of questionable relevance because it is not at all clear who her audience is. My hunch is that she is specifically addressing Asian American scholars, and this often reads as an advocacy to bring a certain sensibility and form to the scholarship. While Lowe seems convinced to have her finger on the pulse of the Asian American experience and culture, the language is rather pretentious and inflated, and her chosen texts for analysis are of questionable value leading one to question whether or not Lowe really understands the "Asian American experience" (if such a thing can be captured as a totality) or is merely an ivory tower pedant producing ethnic literature whose readership and resonance will not extend beyond her scholarly clique.

Anyone with an interest in Asian American history, politics, and culture needs to read this book. A courageous effort to synthesize and contextualize the Asian American experience.

The most articulate, insightful, powerful voice in Asian American cultural and literary criticism. This book is essential reading not just for Asian Americanists but for everyone interested in American culture, ethnicity, capitalism, literature.

When my favorite professor assigned "Immigrant Acts" for an Independent Study on race, immigration and labor, he said, rather dryly, "I'll just throw that in there to see if it pisses you off."

I've read plenty of bad academic writing, but Lowe astounded me anew. "Turgid," "bloated," "ponderous," and "pompous" are adjectives that came to mind as I attempted to claw meaning from her prose. It's that bleeding awful.

Certainly clearer, more graceful, and far less alienating ways to convey these ideas exist (and no, they aren't dumbed-down). Why, oh why, do some academics *insist* on torturing their readers like this? The self-consciously opaque language does nothing to add substance or authority to Lowe's argument. If anything, it weakens it; there are only so many times the reader can exclaim, "Oh, so *that's* what she meant! Why didn't she just say it?" before weary contempt kicks in.

Had my professor not insisted I read it, I would have ditched "Immigrant Acts" without regret. He was right--this book *did* piss me off, but in the wrong way. It wasn't the ideas or the argument that provoked me; it was the utter lack of regard for the reader.

I did find Lowe's arguments intriguing once I managed to translate them, and I particularly liked Chapter 4, which critiques official productions of multiculturalism. Yet I'm still not entirely sure the work required was worth it. I also suspect there are finer points that I missed altogether, but since Lowe can't be bothered to present them clearly, I don't care to go back and try to find them.

I had to read this for my Theories of Race course at Mills College, and after the class collectively ranted against this structural disaster, I am sure the professor won't use it again. Lowe knows of what she speaks, but can you decipher it? We couldn't. And, it is unfortunate, as she is obviously a leader in her field. I resent scholars making things overly difficult, as it alienates the reader - and boy, did Lowe do a fabulous job with that! I suggest reading Ron Takaki if you want a good, very rewarding look at ethnicity in America. He rocks! Lowe rocks...somewhere, but not here. (meow!)