Review by Kristen Rutherford

The term Asian American is an umbrella term that encompasses adoptees, first generation immigrants, and their American-born descendants. The category includes professionals in engineering, medicine, finance, artists, blue collar workers and underemployed refugees. English-only speakers, bilingual and native language only speakers are all represented in the array of life captured under the vast heading. But the reasons that we are all able to claim Asian-American as an identity lies in the perception that other's hold of us that we are perpetual foreigners and fall somewhere outside the usual racial boundaries that typically characterize American definitions of race-sensitive issues.

These two books vividly illustrate the importance of Asian-American activism and the significant history of Asians in America. Both books make the case for a need of a movement away from a context that places Asian Americans outside the usual Black/white paradigm. Although both books can be critical of segments of America's population and often paint dreary pictures of our past, our futures can benefit tremendously from their insights and wake-up calls.

Helen Zia's Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People is an extremely accessible history of Asian-America. The book chronicles the beginnings of both the movement and population. The compelling autobiographical tale interwoven into the catalogue of landmark events is one that many of our readers will be able to relate to. The author's own story is one of growing up as an American Born Chinese in an almost exclusively white New Jersey town and her experiences as a student activist, auto manufacturing worker, and a journalist. Because of our adoption experiences many of us don't have the Zia family's historical memory and this book is a good introduction to the larger Asian American immigration experience. The momentous events pertinent to Asian America are presented in a clear, journalistic style that argues their significance to our cause and how the country was effected by the conflict, if it were at all.

The State of Asian America: Activism and Resistance in the 1990's, edited by Karin Aguilar-San Juan, is part of South End Press's Race and Resistance series, and is a collection of essays written by more than 20 Asian Americans. It is not a call to arms but an honest assessment of where the Asian American movement currently stands. The events of the 1990's have brought about a resurgence of activism that was ignored in the 1980's. The previous decade's more conservative arena again marked a time when Asians had to combat the Yellow Peril stereotype. But from the monumental riots in Los Angeles to the Republican led witch hunts of Chinese spies, the attack on Asian American is alive today. Although more scholarly in tone than Zia's narrative approach the essays also encompass large sections of the Asian American experience and draw from writers of all Asian ethnicities and origins.