Frustrated by the relative invisibility of Asians in U.S. history and culture, Zia, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, details the diverse cultural backgrounds of Asians in America. She notes the historical cycles that have seen Americans alternately embracing and repudiating Asians. Zia recounts the immigration of her own parents, their marriage, and their attempts to make themselves into Americans, efforts that were complicated when Zia came of age during the social and racial upheaval of the 1960s. She also recounts the dubious U.S. history of race relations regarding Asians, regrouping favored and disfavored nationalities, temporarily reclassifying favored groups as whites. She examines the internment of the Japanese during World War II, exploitation of Chinese workers in the West and the South, and the racial animus aimed at Vietnamese relocated in the U.S. after the war. Zia sees the convergence of growth in Asian populations, the diversity of that population, and an incipient Asian American movement that may initiate increased political power and social influence in the U.S. Vanessa Bush
From Kirkus Reviews
Zia, a Chinese-American and co-editor of the reference Asian American Biography, intertwines a memoir of her own life with an informal history of Asians in America. Unless one starts with prehistoric immigrants crossing the Bering Straits, the first Asians to arrive in America were Filipinos. Spanish traders impressed them as seaman, and many jumped ship in Louisiana in the 16th century. After the Spanish-American War, Filipinos, technically US citizens, immigrated in large numbers to Alaska, where they worked, under barbarous conditions, in salmon canneries. Of course, as Zia points out, the Japanese fared even worse, rounded up and placed in internment camps as WWII began, even as many of the first-born, the nisei, fought both in Europe and the Pacific. In fact, in one of Zia's many telling anecdotes, an all-Japanese unit was set to liberate Dachau, but was held back because of the publicity problem. Zia is perhaps most passionate describing the Chinese, reminding us of the infamous exclusion law of the 1880sinstituted after many of them had died to build the railroads and the country, in a sense, was done with them. Into the larger Chinese story Zia weaves her own more intimate history. A child of the 1960s and initially a traditional, compliant daughter on the path toward becoming a physician, she threw off the traces, joining forces with black activists and groups opposing the Vietnam War. Yet Asians were special, ``invisible'' and yet discriminated against even among activists. Instead of following in the mold of other activists, Zia took yet another routeto Detroit, where she bolted together automobiles and came to see herself as a writer and agitator for Chinese-American rights. Evenhanded, subtle, and engaging, though Zias interwoven memoir is less compelling than the vast story of these many peoples, laboring mightily to become Americans. (B&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"An inspiring story of the struggles of Zia and diverse Asian Americans to transform themselves from "aliens" into Americans, their fervent and hopeful "dreams" of equality unfurled before the winds of the coming multicultural millennium." -- Ronald Takaki, Author of Strangers from a Different Shore
"Helen Zia has produced what many of us were waiting for - an honest, scholarly, yet intensely personal book about the transformation of Asian America. She deftly interweaves the remarkable history of a people with her own unique journey as a pioneer activist and writer. The result - Asian American Dreams - is a fresh and incisive narrative, epic in its sweep, thrilling in its verve and clarity." -- Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking
"Helen Zia is one of our nation's most original thinkers, and her book serves not only as an invaluable record of a movement but also as a moving and often funny personal memoir. Asian American Dreams marries social history to literature; it caused me to reflect upon the past and ask questions about the future." -- David Henry Hwang, playwright
"Part memoir, part theory, part call to action - this book swept me away." -- Mari Matsuda, Author of We Won't Go Back
"Powerful and encompassing. For the first time, I feel as if I am not an outsider reading about other communities. This is the first comprehensive account of the Asian Pacific American political movement that my generation has the power and position to shape." -- Kaying Yang, Southeast Asia Resource Action Center
"Zia has given us a way to examine the gritty reality of what it takes to strengthen a voice from within America, from student organizing movements, the prosecution of hate crimes, advocacy for equality of job opportunities, to an examination of intergenerational tensions." -- Angela E. Oh, Attorney, Former Member, Advisory Board to the President's Initiative on Race
"Zia's goal seems to be threefold: to argue that Asian Americans, collectively the fastest growing group in the country, count as an American category; to illuminate some of the fissures among them; and to hightlight recent episodes that have shaped the idea of the Asian in America...This is an important book because it seeks to answer a question that few other popular works pose: What does it take for people like the author to become fully American?" -- New York Times Book Review, March 5, 2000
...this is an important book because it seeks to answer a question that few other popular works pose: What does it take for people like the author to become fully American? -- The New York Times Book Review, Somini Sengupta
About the Author
Helen Zia, and award-winning journalist, has covered Asian American communities and social and political movements for more than twenty years. Born in New Jersey and a graduate of Princeton's first co-educational class, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
