Recollecting Early Asian America: Essays in Cultural History

1. Introduction Yuko Matsukawa, Josephine Lee, and Imogene L. Lim Part I: Locations and Relocations 2. Pacific Entry, Pacific Century: Chinatown and Chinese Canadian History Imogene L. Lim 3. Chinese Campus and Chinatowns: Chinese Mining Settlements in the Canadian and American West Randall Rohe 4. Artifacts of a Lost City: Arnold Genthe's Pictures of Old Chinatown and its Intertexts Ema Teng 5. The Komagata Maru: Memory and Mobilization Among the South Asian Diaspora in North America Rajini Srikanth 6. Community Destroyed? Assessing the Impact of the Loss of Community on Japanese Americans During World War II Lane Ryo Hirabayashi Part II: Crossings 7. From Colonial Subject to Undesirable Alien: Filipino Immigration Exclusionand Repatriation 1920-1940 Mae M. Ngai 8. The Sojourner as Astronaut: Paul Siu in Global Perspective Adam McKeown 9. Between Fact and Fiction: Literary Portraits of Chinese Americans in the 1905 Anti-American Boycott Guanhua Wang 10. From Exchange Visitor to Permanent Resident: Reconsidering Filipino Nurse Migration as a Post-1965 Phenomenon Catherine Ceniza Choy 11. China Latina Fabiana Chiu-Rinaldi Part III: Objects 12. Exotic Explorations: Travels to Asia in Early Cinema Jeanette Roan 13. Representing the Oriental in Nineteenth-Century Trade Cards Yuko Matsukawa 14. Dissecting the "Devil Doctor": Stereotype and Sensationalism in Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu Tina Chen 15. Footprints from the Past: Passing Racial Stereotypes in the Hardy Boys Meredith Wood 16. Face-ing/De-Face-ing Racism: Physiognomy as Ethnic Marker in Early Eurasian/Amerasian Women's Texts Helena Grice Part IV: Recollecting 17. Yan Phou Lee on the Asian American Frontier Amy Ling 18. "A Different Mode of Speech": Yone Noguchi in Meiji America Edward Marx 19. Asian American sin Progress: College Plays 1937-1955 Josephine Lee 20. The Americanization of Americans: The Phenomenon of Nisei Internment Camp Theater Robert Cooperman 21. Reclaiming Sui Sin Far Guy Beauregard

"This eclectic volume of quality scholarship mirrors the current state of Asian American studies, capturing dynamic and revisionist attempts to record an inclusive history that recognizes difference while exploring commonalities." Journal of the West "The editors have assembled an engaging collection of essays which together dramatize the range and depth of 'early' Asian American history. The essays in this volume show us the extraordinary diversity and texture of Asian American culture before the demographic turn of the late 1960s. Accessible to the general reader, this new scholarship is eminently useful for the classroom." --Robert G. Lee, Associate Professor of American Civilization, Brown University, and author of Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Temple) "[The book] presents us with exciting new scholarship on the period before 1960. Taken together, the volume's cogent introduction and twenty individually authored essays contribute to the field of Asian American studies by reaffirming the worth of studying the past, not only for what it can tell us about the present but also for its own rich, complicated, and intellectually rewarding reasons...As the essays in this volume demonstrate, [this] is worth studying. Re/Collecting Early Asian America thus represents a milestone in the development of a maturing field." --The Journal of American Ethnic History "Defining 'early' as the period beginning in the 1800s with the initial migration of Asians to the Americas and continuing until the dramatic policy changes in the mid-1960s, this collection is organized around four themes. "Locations and Relocations" examines place as constructed, with several essays taking Chinatowns, real or imagined, as their subjects. "Crossings" complicates the popular notion of migration as a movement in one direction, clearly defined in time and space. "Objects" addresses issues of racial stereotype. "Recollections" celebrates early Asian American artists while grappling with questions about what counts as art and who qualifies as Asian American." --American Literature "This well-documented compilation of 20 essays, mostly by established scholars in their respective fields, discusses the history, literature, memories, and anthropology of Asians in the Americas...The editors have done a commendable job of selecting a well-balanced, compelling, and fascinating set of essays that are informative, easy to read, and scholarly." --Library Journal "[F]ascinating...the authors manage to provide new insight that illuminates the tension between the marginalization and disenfranchisement of early Asian Americans and their efforts to challenge institutionalized racism while creating a vibrant cultural space." --Asian Affairs