Are you headed to the 2018 Association for Asian American Studies conference in San Francisco? We are! Here is a preview of new books in The Asian American Experience series to look out for at AAAS.

Here are 5 books to look out for at #AAAS2018

Becoming Refugee American: The Politics of Rescue in Little Saigon

In this original book, Phuong Tran Nguyen examines the phenomenon of refugee nationalism among Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. His analysis moves beyond the familiar rescue narrative to chart the intimate yet contentious relationship these Vietnamese Americans have with their adopted homeland.

 

 

 

 

 

The Work of Mothering: Globalization and the Filipino Diaspora

Harrod J. Suarez details the ways literature and cinema play critical roles in encountering, addressing, and problematizing what we think we know about overseas Filipina workers. The result is a series of readings that develop new ways of thinking through diasporic maternal labor that engages with the sociological imaginary.

 

 

 

 

 

Discriminating Sex: White Leisure and the Making of the American “Oriental”

Amy Sueyoshi draws on everything from newspapers to felony case files to oral histories in order to examine how whites’ pursuit of gender and sexual fulfillment gave rise to racial caricatures. She bridges feminist, queer, and ethnic studies to show how the white quest to forge new frontiers in gender and sexual freedom reinforced—and spawned—racial inequality through the ever evolving Oriental.

 

 

 

 

Muncie, India(na): Middletown and Asian America

A daughter in one of Muncie’s first Indian American families, Himanee Gupta-Carlson puts forth an essential question: what do nonwhites, non-Christians, and/or non-natives mean when they call themselves American? Her stories of members of Muncie’s South Asian communities unearth the silences imposed by past studies while challenging the body of scholarship in fundamental ways.

 

 

 

 

 

The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age

Drawing on interviews and up-close collaboration with a group of working migrant mothers, Valerie Francisco-Menchavez looks at the sacrifices, emotional and material consequences, and recasting of roles that emerge from family separation. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of today’s transnational family—sundered, yet inexorably linked over the distances by timeless emotions and new forms of intimacy.