Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities

By Yen Le Espiritu

Book Overview

With different histories, cultures, languages, and identities, most Americans of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and Vietnamese origin are lumped together and viewed by other Americans simply as Asian Americans. Since the mid 1960s, however, these different Asian American groups have come together to promote and protect both their individual and their united interests. The first book to examine this particular subject, Asian American Panethnicity is a highly detailed case study of how, and with what success, diverse national-origin groups can come together as a new, enlarged panethnic group.

Yen Le Espiritu explores the construction of large-scale affiliations, in which previously unrelated groups submerge their differences and assume a common identity. Making use of extensive interviews and statistical data, she examines how Asian panethnicity protects the rights and interests of all Asian American groups, including those, like the Vietnamese and Cambodians, which are less powerful and prominent than the Chinese and Japanese. By citing specific examples-educational discrimination, legal redress, anti-Asian violence, the development of Asian American Studies programs, social services, and affirmative action-the author demonstrates how Asian Americans came to understand that only by cooperating with each other would they succeed in fighting the racism they all faced.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566390966
• ISBN13: 9781566390965
• Release Date: February 1993
• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Length: 139 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Major source of Asian American panethnic information

Yen Le Espiritu's book is probably the major source of research and theory dealing with Asian American panethnicity. While there are a few other researchers doing panethnicity work with other ethnic groups, this book remains the main source for those studying Asian Americans.Her summaries of theories of ethnicity are very short and perhaps leave out a little too much. But, the book does a good job of giving the reader an introduction to some major theories in preparation for her ideas. Her main areas are politics, funding, census classifications and anti-Asian violence.I appreciate this book a great deal in that it brings together some disparate pieces of information and puts it all in the context of panethnicity.