This book sheds light on experiences relatively underrepresented in academic and non-academic sport history. It examines how Asian and Pacific Islander peoples used American football to maintain a sense of community while encountering racial exclusion, labor exploitation, and colonialism. Through their participation and spectatorship in American football, Asian and Pacific Islander people crossed treacherous cultural frontiers to construct what sociologist Elijah Anderson has called a cosmopolitan canopy under which Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and people of diverse racial and ethnic identities interacted with at least a semblance of respect and equity. And perhaps a surprising number of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have excelled in college and even professional football before the 1960s. Finally, acknowledging the impressive influx of elite Pacific Islander gridders who surfaced in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, it is vital to note as well the racialized nativism shadowing the lives of these athletes.

This updated edition explores the vibrant community of Asian Pacific Americans through sports. This book tells intriguing tales of athletes, such as aquatic legend Duke Kahanamoku and diving gold medalist Vicki Manalo, but has been expanded to include Tiger Woods, Tim Lincicum, Troy Polamalu and other current athletes.

Delves into the long history of Asian American sporting cultures, considering how identities and communities are negotiated on sporting fields Through a close examination of Asian American sporting cultures ranging from boxing and basketball to spelling bees and wrestling, the contributors reveal the intimate connection between sport and identity formation. Sport plays a special role in the processes of citizen-making and of the policing of national and diasporic bodies. It is thus one key area in which Asian American stereotypes may be challenged, negotiated, and destroyed as athletic performances create multiple opportunities for claiming American identities. This volume incorporates work on Pacific Islander, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Americans as well as East Asian Americans, and explores how sports are gendered, including examinations of Asian American men’s attempts to claim masculinity through sporting cultures as well as the “Orientalism” evident in discussions of mixed martial arts as practiced by Asian American female fighters. This American story illuminates how marginalized communities perform their American-ness through co-ethnic and co-racial sporting spaces.

Delves into the long history of Asian American sporting cultures, considering how identities and communities are negotiated on sporting fields Through a close examination of Asian American sporting cultures ranging from boxing and basketball to spelling bees and wrestling, the contributors reveal the intimate connection between sport and identity formation. Sport plays a special role in the processes of citizen-making and of the policing of national and diasporic bodies. It is thus one key area in which Asian American stereotypes may be challenged, negotiated, and destroyed as athletic performances create multiple opportunities for claiming American identities. This volume incorporates work on Pacific Islander, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Americans as well as East Asian Americans, and explores how sports are gendered, including examinations of Asian American men’s attempts to claim masculinity through sporting cultures as well as the “Orientalism” evident in discussions of mixed martial arts as practiced by Asian American female fighters. This American story illuminates how marginalized communities perform their American-ness through co-ethnic and co-racial sporting spaces.

From 1912 to 1916, a group of baseball players from Hawaiʻ i barnstormed the U.S. mainland. While initially all Chinese, the Travelers became more multiethnic and multiracial with ballplayers possessing Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, and European ancestries. As a group and as individuals the Travelers' experiences represent a still much too marginalized facet of baseball and sport history. Arguably, they traveled more miles and played in more ball parks in the American empire than any other group of ballplayers of their time. Outside of the major leagues, they were likely the most famous nine of the 1910s, dominating their college opponents and more than holding their own against top-flight white and black independent teams. And once the Travelers’ journeys were done, a team leader and star Buck Lai gained fame in independent baseball on the East Coast of the U.S., while former teammates ran base paths and ran for political office as they confronted racism and colonialism in Hawaiʻ i.

The Routledge Handbook of Asian American Studies brings together leading scholars and scholarship to capture the state of the field of Asian American Studies, as a generation of researchers have expanded the field with new paradigms and methodological tools. Inviting readers to consider new understandings of the historical work done in the past decades and the place of Asian Americans in a larger global context, this ground-breaking volume illuminates how research in the field of Asian American Studies has progressed. Previous work in the field has focused on establishing a place for Asian Americans within American history. This volume engages more contemporary research, which draws on new archives, art, literature, film, and music, to examine how Asian Americans are redefining their national identities, and to show how race interacts with gender, sexuality, class, and the built environment, to reveal the diversity of the United States. Organized into five parts, and addressing a multitude of interdisciplinary areas of interest to Asian American scholars, it covers: • a reframing of key themes such as transnationality, postcolonialism, and critical race theory • U.S. imperialism and its impact on Asian Americans • war and displacement • the garment industry • Asian Americans and sports • race and the built environment • social change and political participation • and many more themes. Exploring people, practice, politics, and places, this cutting-edge volume brings together the best themes current in Asian American Studies today, and is a vital reference for all researchers in the field.

Supplemented with quotes and engaging articles from USA TODAY, the Nation’s No. 1 Newspaper, The Asian Pacific American Experience shines a spotlight on Asian Pacific Americans and their many exciting contributions to American society. From artists and athletes to filmmakers and chefs, Asian Pacific Americans enrich American life. Novelist Amy Tan has offered insights into the lives of Chinese Americans in books such as The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife. In The Eaves of Heaven and other books, writer Andrew X. Pham has examined the experiences of Vietnamese who came to the United States after the Vietnam War. Filmmaker Ang Lee is famous for movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a martial arts film, as well as historical romances such as Sense and Sensibility, based on the Jane Austen novel. Singer-songwriter Norah Jones inherited her musical talent from her musician father, Ravi Shankar. Korean American Michelle Wie is a champion on the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour, while Japanese American speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno has won five Olympic medals. Read this informative title to learn more about how Asian Pacific Americans contribute to the United States’ cultural mosaic, enriching our nation with a wide range of traditions, customs, and life experiences.