"In the past fifty years, Asian Americans have helped change the face of America and are now the fastest growing group in the United States. But as ... historian Erika Lee reminds us, Asian Americans also have deep roots in the country. The Making of Asian America tells the little-known history of Asian Americans and their role in American life, from the arrival of the first Asians in the Americas to the present-day. An epic history of global journeys and new beginnings, this book shows how generations of Asian immigrants and their American-born descendants have made and remade Asian American life in the United States: sailors who came on the first trans-Pacific ships in the 1500s to the Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Over the past fifty years, a new Asian America has emerged out of community activism and the arrival of new immigrants and refugees. No longer a "despised minority," Asian Americans are now held up as America's "model minorities" in ways that reveal the complicated role that race still plays in the United States. Published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the United States' Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that has remade our "nation of immigrants," this is a new and definitive history of Asian Americans. But more than that, it is a new way of understanding America itself, its complicated histories of race and immigration, and its place in the world today"--Jacket.

First convened in April 1989, the NRAC was formed in response to the poor quality of data, the paucity of health statistics, and the limited epidemiological and health services research on Asian and Pacific Islander Americans.

This unique work presents an extraordinary breadth of contemporary and historical views on Asian America and Pacific Islanders, conveyed through the voices of the men and women who lived these experiences over more than 150 years. In 1848, the "First Wave" of Asian immigration arrived in the United States. By the first decade of the 21st century, Asian Americans were the nation's fastest growing racial group. Through a far-ranging array of primary source documents, Voices of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Experience shares what it was like for these diverse peoples to live and work in the United States, for better and for worse. Organized chronologically by ethnicity, the book covers a panoply of ethnic groups, including recent Asian immigrants and mixed race/mixed heritage Asian Americans. There is also a topical section that showcases views on everything from politics to class to gender dynamics, underscoring that the Asian American population is not—nor has it ever been—monolithic. In choosing material, the editors strove to make the volume as comprehensive as possible. Thus, readers will discover documents written by transnational, adopted, and homosexual Asian Americans, as well as documents written from particular religious positions.

A groundbreaking anthology devoted to Asian/Pacific Islander American women and their experiences Asian/Pacific Islander American Women is the first collection devoted to the historical study of A/PI women's diverse experiences in America. Covering a broad terrain from pre-large scale Asian emigration and Hawaii in its pre-Western contact period to the continental United States, the Philippines, and Guam at the end of the twentieth century, the text views women as historical subjects actively negotiating complex hierarchies of power. The volume presents new findings about a range of groups, including recent immigrants to the U.S. and understudied communities. Comprised of original new work, it includes chapters on women who are Cambodian, Chamorro, Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Native Hawaiian, South Asian, and Vietnamese Americans. It addresses a wide range of women's experiences-as immigrants, military brides, refugees, American born, lesbians, workers, mothers, beauty contestants, and community activists. There are also pieces on historiography and methodology, and bibliographic and video documentary resources. This groundbreaking anthology is an important addition to the scholarship in Asian/Pacific American studies, ethnic studies, American studies, women's studies, and U.S. history, and is a valuable resource for scholars and students. Contributors include: Xiaolan Bao, Sucheng Chan, Catherine Ceniza Choy, Vivian Loyola Dames, Jennifer Gee, Madhulika S. Khandelwal, Lili M. Kim, Nancy In Kyung Kim, Erika Lee, Shirley Jennifer Lim, Valerie Matsumoto, Sucheta Mazumdar, Davianna Pomaika'i McGregor, Trinity A. Ordona, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Amy Ku'uleialoha Stillman, Charlene Tung, Kathleen Uno, Linda Trinh Võ, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Ji-Yeon Yuh, and Judy Yung.