The Making of Asian America

Over centuries, Asian Americans have changed the face of America, and been changed by it, but much of their long history in the US has been forgotten and unknown. Asian American history begins long before the US was even a country. The history of Asian Americans is also immigration history. It is a history of America in a global age. And the history of Asian Americans is a history of how race works in the US. Erika Lee’s comprehensive and sweeping history considers the rich, complicated, and sometimes invisible histories of Asians in the US –from sailors who came on the first trans-Pacific ships in the 1500s, to the Chinese laborers who helped build the transcontinental railroad, to the Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII, to more recent immigrants and refugees from other wars in Asia and postwar circumstances. While becoming the fastest-growing group in the US, Asian Americans continue to struggle as both “despised minorities” and “model minorities”. In fact, Asian Americans are overrepresented at both ends of the educational and socioeconomic spectrum of privilege and poverty. Obscured by the broad definition of “Asian” and “Asian American” is a diversity of peoples that represents 24 distinct groups. There is not one single story, but many. Both the diversity and the shared experiences reveal the complex story of the making and remaking of Asian America, and its importance in the history of America. With histories of both exclusion and inclusion, Asian Americans are uniquely positioned to raise questions about what it means to be American in the 21st century.