In his fine book, Mark Chiang presents a genealogy of Asian American studies that begins with the Third World Strike of 1968 and ends with the 1998 controversy over the Association for Asian American Studies fiction award given to Lois-Ann Yamanaka's Blu's Hanging (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997). Drawing heavily on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Chiang argues that Asian American studies has been dominated by a set of internal contradictions and useful misunderstandings, which were painfully and even traumatically revealed during the protests over Yamanaka's award. The five chapters of the book engage in a systematic analysis of key moments and texts that have shaped the field in its current form: the Third World Strike, which would lead to the creation of the first Asian American studies program at San Francisco State College; two books that are emblematic of the two primary methodological strands of Asian American...

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