Hollywood at the Intersection of Race and Identity explores the ways Hollywood represents race, gender, class, and nationality at the intersection of aesthetics and ideology and its productive tensions. This collection of essays asks to what degree can a close critical analysis of films, that is, reading them against their own ideological grain, reveal contradictions and tensions in Hollywood’s task of erecting normative cultural standards? How do some films perhaps knowingly unde...

The words “Asian American film” might evoke a painfully earnest, low-budget documentary or family drama, destined to be seen only in small film festivals or on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service). In her groundbreaking study of the past fifty years of Asian American film and video, Jun Okada demonstrates that although this stereotype is not entirely unfounded, a remarkably diverse range of Asian American filmmaking has emerged. Yet Okada also reveals how the legacy of institutional funding a...

At once provocative and laugh-out-loud funny, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother ignited a global parenting debate with its story of one mother’s journey in strict parenting.Amy Chua argues that Western parenting tries to respect and nurture children’s individuality, while Chinese parents typically believe that arming children with skills, strong work habits, and inner confidence prepares them best for the future. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother chro...

In The Japanese Mind, Roger Davies offers Westerners an insightful guide to understanding the unique aspects of Japanese culture.Readers of this book will develop a comprehensive grasp of Japanese society and the core values that remain at its foundation.Among the topics explored are:aimai (ambiguity), amae (dependence upon others' benevolence), and amakudari (the nation's descent from heave...

"Alex Tizon fearlessly penetrates the core of not just what it means to be male and Asian in America, but what it means to be human anywhere."—Cheryl Strayed, New York Times bestselling authorShame, Alex Tizon tells us, is universal—his own happened to be about race. To counteract the steady diet of American television and movies that taught Tizon to be ashamed of his face, his skin color, his height, he turned outward. ("I had to educate myself on my own w...

The biggest diaspora in Vietnamese history occurred between 1975 and 1992, when more than two million people fled by boat to escape North Vietnam's oppressive communist regime. Before this well-known exodus from Vietnam's shores, however, there was a massive population shift within the country. In 1954, one million fled from north to south to escape war, famine, and the communist land reform campaign. Many of these refugees went on to flee Vietnam altogether in the 1970s and 1980s, and the...

"Marvelous . . . the conceit is elegantly of a piece, yet Hwang is able to keep turning it in on itself to reveal new ambiguities, absurdities, subversions and paradoxes."—Chicago Reader"Hwang's plays collectively chart the evolving definition of what it is to be an 'American.' . . . His art has illuminated and anticipated our ongoing national story with a sensibility unlike any other in the American theater."—Frank RichSpringing from the author's personal experien...

A mesmerizing true story of money, murder, gambling, prostitution, and opium in a "wild ramble around Chinatown in its darkest days." (The New Yorker)Nothing had worked. Not threats or negotiations, not shutting down the betting parlors or opium dens, not house-to-house searches or throwing Chinese offenders into prison. Not even executing them. The New York DA was running out of ideas and more people were dying every day as the weapons of choice evolved f...

Yokohama, California, originally released in 1949, is the first published collection of short stories by a Japanese American. Set in a fictional community, these linked stories are alive with the people, gossip, humor, and legends of Japanese America in the 1930s and 1940s.Replaces ISBN 9780295961675

The divide over race is usually framed as one over Black and White. Sociologist Eileen O’Brien is interested in that middle terrain, what sits in the ever-increasing gray area she dubbed the racial middle.The Racial Middle, tells the story of the other racial and ethnic groups in America, mainly Latinos and Asian Americans, two of the largest and fastest-growing minorities in the United States. Using dozens of in-depth interviews with people of various ethnic and ge...

The United States, the only country to have dropped the bomb, and Japan, the only one to have suffered its devastation, understandably portray the nuclear threat differently on film. American science fiction movies of the 1950s and 1960s generally proclaim that it is possible to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle. Japanese films of the same period assert that once freed the nuclear genie can never again be imprisoned. This book examines genre films from the two countries released bet...

Seventy years after the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan is still dealing with the effects of the bombings on the national psyche. From the Occupation Period to the present, Japanese cinema had offered a means of coming to terms with one of the most controversial events of the 20th century. From the monster movies Gojira (1954) and Mothra (1961) to experimental works like Go Shibata's NN-891102 (1999), atomic bomb imagery features in all genres of...