Book Review of “Trespassers,” by Dr. Willow Lung-Amam
Reviewer: Merrit P. Drucker
This carefully and thoroughly researched study documents the rise of Asian-American suburbs, using California’s Fremont as an exemplar and as representative of other immigrant communities in the United States. In the author’s words:
“Change is an inescapable urban condition. Our built environments will continue to act as revolving doors for innumerable groups that occupy them over time. In Fremont alone, homes have turned over from Portuguese settlers to Japanese, Mexican, and Filipino farmworkers to White middle-class commuters and today to Chinese American and Indian American high-tech workers. Like rings on a tree, landscapes accumulate layers that speak of the many people who have lived on or passed over them. We need places that are able to absorb all these stories. They need not erase or venerate any among them. Each ring must grow to tell its own tale about the people who lived there.” (p. 182)
“Trespassers” is organized into five parts: housing and communities, education, malls and commerce, “monster homes,” and recommendations for melding differences. These are the salient areas where amenities, integration, conflict, and community creation took place in Fremont, and the locations where progress was made or thwarted. The process is a difficult one, with racially based opposition slowing or preventing the normal progression of communities. Explicit and underlying much of the resistance experienced by Asian Americans is racism on the part of the dominant, White culture, exercising its authority through local codes, regulation, Boards, and local elected Councils. From a perspective of literary structure, each Chapter can stand alone as an independent essay or freestanding study.
The author details the history of Fremont from its origin as a rural, agricultural area with small homes to a large and expanding Asian and Indian American suburb with a majority Asian population. The influx of new residents into this Silicon Valley suburb was driven by the enormous demand for skilled professionals in the information technology industry. Seeking good communities with convenient access to employment, Asian immigrants moved in, encountering and overcoming resistance that had prevented other racial and ethnic minorities from gaining homes in suburban communities. This is not a happy story, and the author documents well the outright legal prohibitions on home ownership imposed on minorities, as well as extra-judicial discrimination, by the White power structure, essentially reserving prime suburban areas as White enclaves. Overcoming these illegal barriers was a lengthy and difficult struggle.
As new Asian residents formed families, education became the next, inevitable area of conflict, change, and progress. Immigrant families placed an extraordinarily high value on obtaining the best possible education for their children. This lead to sharp, often tense disagreements between White and Asian parents. The Mission San Jose high school was the venue where an increasing and intensely education oriented Asian community lead to a steadily increasing Asian-American student body, and a steadily decreasing White student body. Ultimately, Mission San Jose became one of the highest performing public high schools in the nation, with an international reputation. New residents went to extraordinary lengths to obtain or rent homes in the Mission San Jose school District, making the area even more attractive to Asian-American parents.
The conflict over schools reached its zenith when a boundary change was proposed for the Weibel Elementary School, one of the three best in the state. Overcrowding at Mission San Jose High School lead to a decision to send students to Irvington High School, which was not as highly ranked as Mission San Jose. The result was a bitterly acrimonious struggle, angry meetings, and legal challenges. Although the boundary change went into effect, its intended effect was soon nullified as parents moved to remain in their favored District, and as test scores improved at Irvington. Soon, Mission San Jose was back to full enrollment.
The focused and intense drive on the part of Asia-American parents to provide their children the best possible education in the best possible local schools was driven by the deeply held belief that a first class education was the way to employment, social status, and long term security. The parents encountered resistance from White parents and administrators, who were concerned about a more rounded and less rigorous academic regime and ease of administration.
Concurrently, Asian Malls became the next area of cultural support and organic organization, as well as some considerable opposition from local governments. Suburban Malls are common; the Asian-themed Malls that arose in Silicon Valley’s Asian communities are distinct in that they are intensely complex, rich in style and diverse in services, and clearly Asian in goods and services provided. The Asian Malls function as full service shopping, dining, and cultural, and community centers. Crucially, and at the core essence of their raison d’etre, the Malls provide a welcoming and safe place where residents from many Asian countries can connect with their language and each other, with all manner of economic and social support, across generations. More analogous to actual commercial areas in Asia than standard, or typical American malls, the Asian Malls striking difference resulted in opposition to their style and existence on the part of municipal officials, typically city Councils, zoning Boards, and planning agencies.
Crowded, with many commercial spaces smaller than typical for Malls, and sold as condominiums, the Asian Malls attracted the ire of municipal officials. Their objections were based on aesthetics and racism. The vibrant and crowded Malls just did not fit with their conception of what a Mall should look and feel like. Further, officials just did not want commercial areas that looked and sounded different from the prevailing White mall, preferring a sort of antiseptic, limited, and false “multiculturalism,” more easily commodified and marketed. Asian Malls, then, have become another area where efforts to create spaces for Asian-American collided head on with White, main-stream America.
While Malls are the public spaces where the shared and common lives of residents occur, private homes, too, became an area of intense disagreements between established residents and Asian new comers. Soon, the problem of “tear-downs” and McMansions became a flashpoint. New residents, wanting a comfortable home in a community with superlative schools, soon began expanding older homes or building new homes, in styles different from and in most cases larger than the existing, predominantly ranch style homes that typified the area.
The desire for larger homes was motivated primarily by a long standing cultural practice that favored interior private family space, with large yards being of lesser importance. New residents wanted homes large enough to be spacious and to accommodate several generations. These homes as well are investments, with their appreciation in value likely to accrue wealth (and the concomitant status and security). Opposition was vociferous and resulted in the issuing of zoning regulations that restricted large expansion of homes and favored the status quo. New residents who wanted to oppose the new, restrictive regulations were hindered by a lack of political power, limited language skills, and incomplete knowledge of the regulatory and legal schema.
The concluding chapter acknowledges that population changes have had a wrenching effect on suburbs nation-wide. The Asian American experience is similar to that of other groups. Suburban areas have no model or experience with rapid demographic change. As long as the American economy continues its demand for skilled professionals, we will see ongoing demographic change, sometimes accepted and at times resisted. All groups shape and modify their spaces, in an effort to connect with their past and build a better future. Suburbs have and will become the places where property rights, cultural expression, regulations, and racism and tolerance will collide and evolve. White hegemony will decline. Urban planning and design must include a genuine respect for diversity. New suburbia need not and will likely never be free of all conflict, but they can become areas of co-existence.
Analysis:
The book is extraordinarily researched and documented (457 bibliographic entries), and the author carefully links extensive personal empirical observations with an enormous body of research and evidence. I would evaluate this text as reliable, factual and accurate, and a solid basis for future work in this field of study. The text is concentrated and detailed, and readers new to the subject matter may need to proceed at a measured pace. This is not “beach reading;” rather, this is serious work for anyone wanting a clear assessment of the suburban situation. White (European-American) readers may be startled to learn of the extent that racism embedded in municipal regulations has legally, if immorally, suppressed immigrant minorities.
Uses and Audiences:
I think “Trespassers” would be a valuable text for various audiences. Elected and appointed government officials would benefit by learning about immigrant communities and their aspirations; this would enable them to help resolve conflicts and mediate the inevitable disputes. As well, it’s a good primer on local politics and its pitfalls and power struggles.
Students of cities (and now suburbs!) could learn much about how suburbs originate, evolve and change over time. I would estimate that the level of detail about suburban evolution would make this book helpful to understanding suburbs nation-wide.
Local municipal and codes enforcement officials, and those responsible for writing codes, would benefit from learning about how cities and suburbs could be planned and managed in a way that minimizes conflict and maximizes options for all. A difficult task, but one that could potentially have quite positive results.
Community or urban development policy professionals, and practitioners, would have their skills much enhanced by a study of this text. As a minimum they would bring a quite expanded view to their work.
The historic preservation community could gain an appreciation of the immigrant experience, and could use the insights provided as a guide to melding important preservation objectives with legitimate resident demands for modification in housing and streetscapes.
Those with concerns for human rights, which should be all of us, would find the Afterword (“Keeping the Dream Alive in Troubled Times”) bracing, encouraging and a good guide to action.
“Trespassers” is destined to become the basic text on demographic shifts in the American suburbs.
Text Information:
“Trespassers? Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia,” by Willow S. Lung-Amam, University of California Press, Oakland, CA, 2017. ISBN: 9780520293892; LCNN: 2016050509.
Reviewer: Merrit P. Drucker, February 15, 2018
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