Uncovering the Past: A Look at the History of Asian Americans with Erika Lee's 'The Making of Asian America'

Scott Schiefelbein: There is a place for a good, solid, academic history - it is helpful for any student to have a resource that lays out its thesis clearly and cleanly. This kind of history can take years of diligence, lonely toil steeped in primary resources. Erika Lee's "The Making of Asian America" is just such a book - a book of massive scope and considerable detail - and one that tells the surprisingly complex story of America's largest minority - "Asian Americans."

You have to put that term in quotes, because the various communities and peoples of Asia who have come to the United States are so vastly different, as are their stories. The book is at its strongest when analyzing the early days of emigration to the United States for various Asian groups - it's a dizzying range of influences and causes. Those different groups faced a complex web of opportunity and discrimination upon arrival - the Chinese immigrants who worked on the trans-continental railroad may have been appreciated by the Powers that Were building the railroad, but they were hardly uniformly accepted. Japanese Americans may have been hard-working citizens, but Pearl Harbor was enough to lead the American government to...

United States on Mar 30, 2022

CynD: The narrative is easy to read and incorporates many key elements of various Asian cultures and their turbulent journeys that have influenced America's melting pot. Like many other immigrants, the politics, taxes, wars, and food shortages influenced many to risk leaving their homes and endure endless chastisement for working hard, industriously, and for less pay. Numerous incidents of deceit (easy money) and entrapment (only a 3 year contract) kept many workers owing many more years of their lives to plantations, sewing "sweatshops," and the like, for the privilege (or punishment) of coming to America. Some younger workers fell for the "get rich quick & easy" ploys while others came to overcome famine, over taxation, war, and/or debt that affected their families. The energetic, industrious, and inexpensive Asian labor force was no longer welcome once their "usefulness" to the established projects (e.g., gold mining & railroad building, etc.) were met and their low wages and self sufficient sections of communities where they lived, were perceived to threaten caucasian work force and higher wages. Mixed marriages were shunned and even forbidden in some areas. Religious...

United States on Jul 03, 2021

S. Lee: Despite attempts to lump them together or tell their through a simplistic and monolithic “model minority” lens, Asian Americans and their histories are in fact exceedingly diverse and complicated. To be Asian American in the twenty-first century is an exercise in coming to terms with a contradiction: benefiting from new positions of power and privilege while still being victims of hate crimes and microaggressions that dismiss Asian American issues and treat Asian Americans as outsiders in their own country (Lee, 391).

There seems to be an existential crisis every time an Asian American, like myself, attempts to answer “am I American (enough)?” If yes, then what do we mean by “American (enough)”? If no, then what prevents us? What has infected our imagination of who belongs and who does not in this so-called “Land of the Free”?

America, seems to me, has a unique ability to remember things differently and selectively. Reading The Making of Asian America was a speechless experience — how have I never heard of these stories before? Truly, the phantasm of Asian American histories attests and perpetuates the non-visibility of Asian Americans. The reading...

United States on Sep 18, 2017

Justin Carpentry: It gave a good overview of world events related to the US and Asia, including CJK, Viet, Lao, Cambodians and Phillipinos in chronological order. Enjoyed it.

Canada on Mar 09, 2016