June 6, 2022
Choy (Empire of Care), a professor of ethnic studies at U.C. Berkeley, chronicles the diverse experiences of Asian Americans over the past 150 years in this illuminating history. Contending that Asian American contributions and struggles have been erased from standard histories of the U.S., Choy highlights the complexity of the Asian American experience, noting that various groups migrated at different times and under different circumstances. She details the recruitment of male Chinese railroad workers in the 1860s; the increase in international adoptions from Asian countries, in particular Korea, in the 1950s; and the influx of refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. She also discusses how nursing shortages have been filled by the recruitment of Filipino nurses and describes the distressing uptick in anti-Asian violence during the Covid-19 pandemic as the latest chapter in a “long-standing history of racializing Asians as disease carriers.” Amid the harrowing stories of abuse and prejudice—including the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII—Choy interweaves inspiring acts of resistance, among them Filipino American labor activist Larry Itliong’s leadership of the Delano Grape Strike in 1965. Sharply drawn profiles of individual Asian Americans add depth to Choy’s broad overview and bring historic events to dramatic life. The result is an essential reconsideration of American history.
July 1, 2022
In this entry to Beacon's Revisioning History series, Choy (Empire of Care, 2003; Global Families, 2013), an ethnic studies professor at the University of California, Berkeley, traces and analyzes the histories of Asian Americans through three key themes: violence, erasure, and resistance. Acknowledging the diversity within Asian American communities, such as Korean, Cambodian, Indian, mixed-race, and adopted Americans, Choy explains that there is ""no singular origin story in Asian American history."" She opens the book in the year 2020, with COVID-19 and the anti-Asian sentiments that followed. Each chapter moves backward in time to highlight the continuity of Choy's key themes. Choy draws on numerous sources and cites specific events that illustrate how Asian American communities have experienced violence and hatred and have formed coalitions advocating for change, representation, and activism in response. Readers of ethnic studies and U.S. history will find this an essential and illuminating resource on the impact and legacies of colonialism, imperialism, violence, and resistance that Asian Americans have experienced.
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Starred review from April 15, 2022
An impressive new work about how major moments in Asian American history continue to influence the modern world. In the first chapter, Choy, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, connects anti-Asian violence during the Covid-19 pandemic to a history of stereotyping Asian immigrants as carriers of disease. Later, she ties the erasure of Chinese railroad workers to the lack of Asian representation in popular media. Popular culture, she writes, has "played a formative role in portraying Asians as subhuman and superhuman threats." Besides covering topics that are relatively well known, such as Japanese internment and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the author also discusses histories that have been largely erased, including the formation of Asian American groups supporting independence struggles on the Asian continent; the long history of Asian-Black solidarity, which dates back to "Frederick Douglass's 1869 speech advocating for Chinese immigration"; and the passage of the misogynistic Page Act of 1875, which forced Asian immigrant women to prove that they were not prostitutes before allowing them entry to the U.S. Choy aptly characterizes her work as a fight against erasure and as an attempt to humanize Asian American immigrants whose invisibility so often exposes them to violence. "Asian Americans are in sight, but unseen. And this must change," she writes. "Placing a human face on the Asian immigrant experience is one way to contest this vicious cycle of nativism." In addition to being deeply knowledgeable, the author radiates passion and sincerity. Her inclusion of personal experiences infuses the narrative with an intimacy unusual for historical texts, and her experimental use of second person--most notably in the chapter about Japanese internment--cleverly sparks empathy in readers who might never have considered what it's like to live through race-based violence. An empathetic and detailed recounting of Asian American histories rarely found in textbooks.
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