Bringing together the personal and professional narratives of Asian American family therapists, this book offers insight into the Asian American experience through systemic theory and frameworks, individual and community stories, and clinical considerations. The Asian American experience is still a largely invisible and unknown one, especially in the field of marriage and family therapy. With a contextual lens, this book highlights how understanding family migration legacies and individual generational status relative to time, place, and context is critical to doing meaningful work with Asian Americans. Filled with thought-provoking case studies and reflective questions, chapters discuss the impact of stereotyping on mental health; the historical and present ways that Asian American racialization invisibilizes individual and collective experiences; shame associated with bicultural identity, gender, generational trauma, media representations; and more. Each chapter bridges these ideas to clinical practice while concurrently centering the voices and experiences of Asian American therapists. This book is essential reading for marriage and family therapists and other mental health clinicians who want to deepen their understanding of, relationship with, and clinical support for the Asian Americans in their lives, whether friends, colleagues, supervisees, or clients.

Since the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Koreatown has become increasingly fractured by intergenerational conflict, class polarization, and suburban flight. In the face of these struggles, community organizations can provide centralized resources and infrastructure to foster an ethnic consciousness and political solidarity among Korean Americans. This book analyzes the role of ethnic community-based organizations and the dynamics of contemporary Korean American politics. Drawing on two case studies, the author identifies diverse ways in which community-based organizations negotiate their political agendas and mainstream ties within the traditional ethnic power structures. One organization promotes middle-class ethnic goals through accommodation to immigrant leaders, while the other emphasizes social justice through alliances with outside interest groups. Both cases challenge the traditional assumption that assimilation undermines ethnicity as a meaningful framework for political identity and solidarity in immigrant groups. Legacies of Struggle reveals how community-based organizations create innovative spaces for political participation among new generations of Korean Americans.

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. This landmark law changed the course of U.S. immigration history, but we know little about its consequences for the Chinese in America or for the United States as a nation of immigrants. At America's Gates is the first book devoted entirely to both Chinese immigrants and the American immigration officials who sought to keep them out. Erika 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." Immigrant identification, border enforcement, surveillance, and deportation policies were extended far beyond any controls that had existed in the United States before. Drawing on a rich trove of historical sources--including recently released immigration records, oral histories, interviews, and letters--Lee brings alive the forgotten journeys, secrets, hardships, and triumphs of Chinese immigrants. Her timely book exposes the legacy of Chinese exclusion in current American immigration control and race relations.

The chapters in this collection cover diverse aspects of the changing meanings and boundaries of race, migration and identity in the contemporary United States. The situation in the USA has been the subject of intense policy and political debate over the past decades and the papers in this volume provide an important insight from a wide range of analytical perspectives. They provide an insight into the changing dynamics of race and migration in the contemporary environment, combining conceptual analysis with original empirical research. The concerns of this volume address global questions of relevance as well as those specific to the USA. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Asian American Literature: An Encyclopedia for Students is an invaluable resource for students curious to know more about Asian North American writers, texts, and the issues and drives that motivate their writing. This volume collects, in one place, a breadth of information about Asian American literary and cultural history as well as the authors and texts that best define it. A dozen contextual essays introduce fundamental elements or subcategories of Asian American literature, expanding on social and literary concerns or tensions that are familiar and relevant. Essays include the origins and development of the term "Asian American"; overviews of Asian American and Asian Canadian social and literary histories; essays on Asian American identity, gender issues, and sexuality; and discussions of Asian American rhetoric and children's literature. More than 120 alphabetical entries round out the volume and cover important Asian North American authors. Historical information is presented in clear and engaging ways, and author entries emphasize biographical or textual details that are significant to contemporary young adults. Special attention has been given to pioneering authors from the late 19th century through the early 1970s and to influential or well-known contemporary authors, especially those likely to be studied in high school or university classrooms.

Since China began its open-door and reform policies in 1978, more than three million Chinese students have migrated to study abroad, and the United States has been their top destination. The recent surge of students following this pattern, along with the rising tide of Chinese middle- and upper-classes' emigration out of China, have aroused wide public and scholarly attention in both China and the US. This book examines the four waves of Chinese student migration to the US since the late 1970s, showing how they were shaped by the profound changes in both nations and by US-China relations. It discusses how student migrants with high socioeconomic status transformed Chinese American communities and challenged American immigration laws and race relations. The book suggests that the rise of China has not negated the deeply rooted "American dream" that has been constantly reinvented in contemporary China. It also addresses the theme of "selective citizenship" – a way in which migrants seek to claim their autonomy - proposing that this notion captures the selective nature on both ends of the negotiations between nation-states and migrants. It cautions against a universal or idealized "dual citizenship" model, which has often been celebrated as a reflection of eroding national boundaries under globalization. This book draws on a wide variety of sources in Chinese and English, as well as extensive fieldwork in both China and the US, and its historical perspective sheds new light on contemporary Chinese student migration and post-1965 Chinese American community. Bridging the gap between Asian and Asian American studies, the book also integrates the studies of migration, education, and international relations. Therefore, it will be of interest to students of these fields, as well as Chinese history and Asian American history more generally.

With overview essays and more than 400 A-Z entries, this exhaustive encyclopedia documents the history of Asians in America from earliest contact to the present day. Organized topically by group, with an in-depth overview essay on each group, the encyclopedia examines the myriad ethnic groups and histories that make up the Asian American population in the United States. "Asian American History and Culture" covers the political, social, and cultural history of immigrants from East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Pacific Islands, and their descendants, as well as the social and cultural issues faced by Asian American communities, families, and individuals in contemporary society. In addition to entries on various groups and cultures, the encyclopedia also includes articles on general topics such as parenting and child rearing, assimilation and acculturation, business, education, and literature. More than 100 images round out the set.