Becoming Chinese American

Becoming Chinese American PDF Author: H. Mark Lai
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759104587
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Collection of essays by Chinese-American scholar Him Mark Lai; published in association with the Chinese Historical Society of San Francisco.

Becoming Chinese American

Becoming Chinese American PDF Author: H. Mark Lai
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 9780759104587
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Get Book

Book Description
Collection of essays by Chinese-American scholar Him Mark Lai; published in association with the Chinese Historical Society of San Francisco.

Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American

Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American PDF Author: Shehong Chen
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252055187
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
The 1911 revolution in China sparked debates that politicized and divided Chinese communities in the United States. People in these communities affirmed traditional Chinese values and expressed their visions of a modern China, while nationalist feelings emboldened them to stand up for their rights as an integral part of American society. When Japan threatened the China's young republic, the Chinese response in the United States revealed the limits of Chinese nationalism and the emergence of a Chinese American identity. Shehong Chen investigates how Chinese immigrants to the United States transformed themselves into Chinese Americans during the crucial period between 1911 and 1927. Chen focuses on four essential elements of a distinct Chinese American identity: support for republicanism over the restoration of monarchy; a wish to preserve Confucianism and traditional Chinese culture; support for Christianity, despite a strong anti-Christian movement in China; and opposition to the Nationalist party's alliance with the Soviet Union and cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party. Sensitive and enlightening, Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American documents how Chinese immigrants survived exclusion and discrimination, envisioned and maintained Chineseness, and adapted to American society.

A Chinaman's Chance

A Chinaman's Chance PDF Author: Eric Liu
Publisher:
ISBN: 1610391942
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
But this narrative obscures too much: the Chinese Americans still left behind, the erosion of the American Dream in general, the emergence--perhaps--of a Chinese Dream, and how other Americans will look at their countrymen of Chinese descent if China and America ever become adversaries. As Chinese Americans reconcile competing beliefs about what constitutes success, virtue, power, and purpose, they hold a mirror up to their country in a time of deep flux. In searching, often personal essays that range from the meaning of Confucius to the role of Chinese Americans in shaping how we read the Constitution to why he hates the hyphen in "Chinese-American," Eric Liu pieces together a sense of the Chinese American identity in these auspicious years for both countries.

My Journey to Becoming Chinese American

My Journey to Becoming Chinese American PDF Author: Shium Andrew Chen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780991466597
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
In his memoir, Dr. Shium Andrew Chen recounts the fascinating story of his youth in pre-Communist China, his emigration to the United States, his significant contributions to the field of psychology, and his years of community service and activism on behalf of Chinese Americans and other ethnic minority groups. He also addresses the difficulty Chinese Americans have identifying with and blending their Chinese and American identities, and asserts that finding a balance of both backgrounds and cultures leads to finding community and compassion. Through his narrative and the story of his life's work, Dr. Chen makes a compelling case for supporting, promoting, and embracing ethnic diversity as a tenet of American values.

Chinese American Transnational Politics

Chinese American Transnational Politics PDF Author: H. Mark Lai
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252077148
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Born and raised in San Francisco, Lai was trained as an engineer but blazed a trail in the field of Asian American studies. Long before the field had any academic standing, he amassed an unparalleled body of source material on Chinese America and drew on his own transnational heritage and Chinese patriotism to explore the global Chinese experience. In Chinese American Transnational Politics, Lai traces the shadowy history of Chinese leftism and the role of the Kuomintang of China in influencing affairs in America. With precision and insight, Lai penetrates the overly politicized portrayals of a history shaped by global alliances and enmities and the hard intolerance of the Cold War era. The result is a nuanced and singular account of how Chinese politics, migration to the United States, and Sino-U.S. relations were shaped by Chinese and Chinese American groups and organizations. Lai revised and expanded his writings over more than thirty years as changing political climates allowed for greater acceptance of leftist activities and access to previously confidential documents. Drawing on Chinese- and English-language sources and echoing the strong loyalties and mobility of the activists and idealists he depicts, Lai delivers the most comprehensive treatment of Chinese transnational politics to date.

The Chinese Americans

The Chinese Americans PDF Author: Benson Tong
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Originally published in 2000, this fully revised and redesigned edition traces the Chinese experience in the United States from the 1780s to the present, demonstrating that Chinese Americans have played an active role in shaping the history of our nation. This revised edition includes new material on children's history, transnationalism, and health care, and the author has expanded his original text and included more Chinese American voices.

Envisioning America

Envisioning America PDF Author: Tritia Toyota
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804772827
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Envisioning America is a groundbreaking and richly detailed study of how naturalized Chinese living in Southern California become highly involved civic and political actors. Like other immigrants to the United States, their individual life stories are of survival, becoming, and belonging. But unlike any other Asian immigrant group before them, they have the resources—Western-based educations, entrepreneurial strengths, and widely based social networks in Asia—to become fully accepted in their new homes. Nevertheless, Chinese Americans are finding that their social credentials can be a double-edged sword. Their complete incorporation as citizens is bounded both by mainstream discourse in the United States, which paints them racially as perpetual foreigners, and by an existing Asian-Pacific American community not always accepting of their economic achievements and transnational ties. Their attempts at inclusion are at the heart of a vigorous struggle for recognition and political empowerment. This book challenges the notion that Asian Americans are apathetic or apolitical about civic engagement, reminding us that political involvement would often have been a life-threatening act in their homeland. The voices of Chinese Americans who tell their stories in these pages uncover the ways in which these new citizens actively embrace their American citizenship and offer a unique perspective on how global identities transplanted across borders become rooted in the local.

Chinese American Transnationalism

Chinese American Transnationalism PDF Author: Sucheng Chan
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1592134351
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Chinese American Transnationalism considers the many ways in which Chinese living in the United States during the exclusion era maintained ties with China through a constant interchange of people and economic resources, as well as political and cultural ideas. This book continues the exploration of the exclusion era begun in two previous volumes: Entry Denied, which examines the strategies that Chinese Americans used to protest, undermine, and circumvent the exclusion laws; and Claiming America, which traces the development of Chinese American ethnic identities. Taken together, the three volumes underscore the complexities of the Chinese immigrant experience and the ways in which its contexts changed over the sixty-one year period.

Becoming Asian American

Becoming Asian American PDF Author: Nazli Kibria
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 080187629X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Based on interviews with second-generation Chinese- and Korean-Americans, “this book is filled with a number of illuminating empirical findings” (American Journal of Sociology). In Becoming Asian American, Nazli Kibria draws upon extensive interviews she conducted with second-generation Chinese and Korean Americans in Boston and Los Angeles who came of age during the 1980s and 1990s to explore the dynamics of race, identity, and adaptation within these communities. Moving beyond the frameworks created to study other racial minorities and ethnic whites, she examines the various strategies used by members of this group to define themselves as both Asian and American. In her discussions on such topics as childhood, interaction with non-Asian Americans, college, work, and the problems of intermarriage and child-raising, Kibria finds wide discrepancies between the experiences of Asian Americans and those described in studies of other ethnic groups. While these differences help to explain the unusually successful degree of social integration and acceptance into mainstream American society enjoyed by this “model minority,” it is an achievement that Kibria’s interviewees admit they can never take for granted. Instead, they report that maintaining this acceptance requires constant effort on their part. Kibria suggests further developments may resolve this situation—especially the emergence of a new kind of pan–Asian American identity that would complement the Chinese or Korean American identity rather than replace it.

The Good Immigrants

The Good Immigrants PDF Author: Madeline Y. Hsu
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691176213
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Conventionally, US immigration history has been understood through the lens of restriction and those who have been barred from getting in. In contrast, The Good Immigrants considers immigration from the perspective of Chinese elites—intellectuals, businessmen, and students—who gained entrance because of immigration exemptions. Exploring a century of Chinese migrations, Madeline Hsu looks at how the model minority characteristics of many Asian Americans resulted from US policies that screened for those with the highest credentials in the most employable fields, enhancing American economic competitiveness. The earliest US immigration restrictions targeted Chinese people but exempted students as well as individuals who might extend America's influence in China. Western-educated Chinese such as Madame Chiang Kai-shek became symbols of the US impact on China, even as they patriotically advocated for China's modernization. World War II and the rise of communism transformed Chinese students abroad into refugees, and the Cold War magnified the importance of their talent and training. As a result, Congress legislated piecemeal legal measures to enable Chinese of good standing with professional skills to become citizens. Pressures mounted to reform American discriminatory immigration laws, culminating with the 1965 Immigration Act. Filled with narratives featuring such renowned Chinese immigrants as I. M. Pei, The Good Immigrants examines the shifts in immigration laws and perceptions of cultural traits that enabled Asians to remain in the United States as exemplary, productive Americans.