hy399

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Alison Bemis
John Williams & Jane Murphy
HY 399 – Junior Seminar: Studying History
May 11, 2016
Where Are You Really From?: Reimagining Asian American History in the Late 20th Century
In 1969, a series of heated and at times violent strikes and protests at the University of
California at Berkeley and San Francisco State University culminated in the establishment of
new departments of ethnic studies at each school.1 Established as a result of student demands for
scholarship concerning the histories of people of color in America, these departments included
Asian American studies programs. With an interdisciplinary approach, Asian American studies
programs sought to reimagine American history, culture, and identity with a new focus.
Encompassing a wide variety of scholarship and approaches in order to study and attempt to
make sense of the factors which have shaped the lives and perceptions of these different minority
groups. Asian American studies programs provide an opportunity for students and teachers alike
to examine issues and events with a critical eye and through the lens of an Asian American
experience.
This study aims to examine several authors’ writings on Asian American history and
identify the themes and ideas present within these works about the past, present, and future of
Asian American history. This paper looks at six different pieces, published between 1974 and
2005. Despite this 31-year range, four of the six works were published between a relatively short,
11-year time span of 1989 and 2000. Each of the six authors has strong associations with the
West Coast, and all but one were either educated in or worked in California. Five of the six
authors are Asian American, and at least three of those were raised in non-mainland American
1 Wang, L. Ling-chi. "Asian American studies." Issues: Understanding Controversy and
Society. ABC-CLIO, 2016. Web. 10 May 2016.

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environments. Each author addresses the paradigms and stereotypes which have limited not only
the study of Asian American history, but the lives and opportunities of Asian Americans
themselves. Each writer questions the shifts in the study of Asian American history and very
thoughtfully and deliberately enters the discourse about Asian Americans.
After receiving his PhD from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1961 and
working at several universities throughout the following years, Roger Daniels settled into his
career when he accepted a post at the University of Cincinnati in 1976, where he remained until
his retirement in 2002. Daniels’ extensive career has focused on the modern United States from
the Gilded age to the present, and on the history of immigration and of Asian Americans in
particular. His publications include through investigations of the Asian American immigrant
experience, as well as issues of Japanese internment and treatment. In 1974, Daniels published
an article in the Pacific Historical Review titled “American Historians and East Asian
Immigrants,” discussing the history of academic views towards Asian immigrants. Providing a
commentary on how and why different Asian American groups’ stories have been written or
remained unwritten, Daniels’ article can provide some insight into the slow entrance of historians
into the study of Asian American history and the implications of that slowness on the present day
field of study.
When Ronald Takaki graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the College of Wooster in
Ohio, he did so as one of two Asian American students at the school.2 A descendant of Japanese
field workers, Takaki had spent his life on O’ahu, in Pālolo Valley until he left for the mainland
to attend college. In 1966, the University of California at Los Angeles hired Takaki, then a PhD
2 Woo, Elaine. "Ronald T. Takaki Dies at 70; Pioneer in the Field of Ethnic Studies." Los
Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 29 May 2009. Web. 09 May 2016.

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candidate, to teach the school’s first black history course.3 In that course, Takaki encouraged
students to “strengthen [their] critical thinking skills and [their] writing skills,”4 as these could
serve as revolutionary tools. Though Takaki was dismissed from UCLA in 1970 for openly
criticizing the school’s hiring policies, this did not damage his future in academia; two years
later, he was hired as the first full time faculty member of UC Berkeley’s Department of Ethnic
Studies, where he taught until his 2004 retirement. Takaki’s work examined minority groups in
America, focusing on the experiences of Asian Americans in particular. In Strangers from a
Different Shore, Takaki’s methods strayed from the presentation and analysis of only archival
fact, instead incorporating personal testimony and accounts into his histories. By incorporating
these narratives into his larger themes and ideas, Takaki provided the foundation for a new Asian
American history, one which turned the focus away from Asian Americans as they pertain to
white America and towards Asian Americans in their own right.
Sucheng Chan was born in Shanghai, China and spent her early years in China, Hong
Kong, and Malaysia. After attending junior high in Singapore and high school in New York City,
Chan earned her bachelor’s degree in economics, master’s degree in Asian Studies, and a PhD in
political science from UC Berkeley. As a self-described “social scientist turned historian,”5 Chan
turned to the field after realizing that the questions which she and her students raised about
contemporary issues could only be answered through studying history.6 Chan’s work has focused
on Asian Americans and on Asians in America, studying the experiences and roles of different
3 Woo
4 Woo
5 Chan 15
6 "Chan, Sucheng (1941–) - Comparative History of Asian International Migration, Asian-
American Economic History." - University, Studies, California, and Professor. N.p., n.d. Web.
09 May 2016.

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groups of Asian Americans in American history. Throughout her work, Chan has addressed
some of the lesser studied aspects of these histories, such as Chinese immigrants’ role in
Californian agriculture and the lives of Cambodian refugees in the United States. In 1996, Chan
published an article in the OAH Magazine of History titled “The Writing of Asian American
History,” examining the historiography of Asian Americans with a sharply critical gaze. In her
article, Chan provides a framework for Asian American historiography as she sees it, and
suggestions for the reimagining of this history, among which are works by Daniels and Takaki’s
Strangers from a Different Shore. Chan’s views provide a clear framework for how Asian
American historiography has functioned, and in what direction Chan hopes it follows in the near
and distant future.
Unlike the other authors discussed in this paper, Michael Omi is not strictly a historian,
but a sociologist. Omi’s work with Michael Winant on a theory of racial formation provided
sociologists with a new analytic tool with which to examine the origins and functions of race in
society. In 1996, two years after Racial Formation in the United States debuted, Omi published
an article in the OAH Magazine of History titled “Teaching, Situating, and Interrogating Asian
American History” which examines the evolution of his introductory course to Asian American
history at UC Berkeley. In this insightful article, Omi recognizes the different influences on the
course’s structure and content, as well as its direction moving forward through time. Citing
university general requirements and rapidly changing university demographics as the most
influential factors of changes to the course, Omi’s article provides a thoughtful commentary on
Asian American history and on the present and future teachings of this history.
Stephen Sumida, a professor of American Ethnic Studies at the University of
Washington, has dedicated much of his work, both academic and non-academic, to Asian

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American and Hawaiian studies. Sumida has taken an active role in promoting minority issues,
particularly those of Asian American and Hawaiian peoples, through his participation in various
organizations such as the Pacific Northwest Asian American Writers’ Conference and Talk Story
Inc. Sumida’s article “The More Things Change: Paradigm Shifts in Asian American History”
appeared in the June 2000 volume of American Studies International, discussing the paradigms
which have affected and transformed perceptions of Asian Americans in the writing of history.
In addition to the paradigms such as that of an Asian American “dual identity,” Sumida’s article
touches on some of the persistent stereotypes surrounding Asian Americans throughout their
histories. Sumida calls for a “challenging, critical sharpness”7 in the study of Asian Americans as
he describes his paradigms and the corresponding legacies.
In her work as an Associate Professor in the Women and Gender Studies department at
Arizona State University, Karen Leong has explored and applied the concept of intersectionality,
and the influence of varying discourses about categories such as gender, race, class, and nation
have affected and mutually reinforced one another. Her 2005 book The China Mystique: Pearl S.
Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong, and the Transformation of American Orientalism
addresses these ideas about intersectionality in the context of three women whose lives and
works greatly influenced the American public’s imagination and perceptions of China and of
Chinese people. Leong analyzes the impact of each woman’s individual identities on her
accomplishments, as well as the limitations that these identities imposed upon each woman at
times.
Through both their scholarly and non-academic achievements, each of the authors
discussed here has contributed to the reimagining and reconceptualizing of Asian American
7 Sumida 112

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history. Though they each take a different focus, many of the individual authors’ ideas about
how and why to write Asian American history converge. From Daniels to Leong, each author
identifies what he or she views as the significant forces driving Asian American history in the
past and present. Within their writings await new paradigms and new frameworks through which
to view not only Asian American studies and Asian American history, but also Asian American
peoples themselves.
In “American Historians and East Asian Immigrants,” Daniels examines previous
scholarship about Asian Americans with a critical eye and characterizes the different periods of
that scholarship. Daniels’ periodization of Asian American historical scholarship paints 19th
century writers as “ideological abettors of the anti-Oriental movements,”8 and the following era
of writers such as Mary Roberts Coolidge as having primarily labor-driven interests in Asian
Americans. Moving onto the early 20th century, Daniels names several different strains of
historical focus and attitudes, identifying this period as the “rise of professional historianship.”9
These approaches to Asian American history have, in Daniels’ view, contributed to the more
recent views of Asian immigrants and citizens as a component of a larger portrait of American
racism.10 Daniels’ periodization provides a framework through which to view Asian American
studies, and Asian American history in particular. With this framework, Daniels helps to
structure the different motives and discourses involved in creating Asian Americans, and the
development and changes of these discourses.
8 Daniels, Roger. “American Historians and East Asian Immigrants”. Pacific Historical
Review 43.4 (1974): 449–472. Web. 449.
9 Daniels 449
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One of the major concerns of Daniels’ article is the focus of the extant body of work
about Asian Americans, and the incongruity of this focus throughout these works. Stating that
work about Asian Americans has focused “on the excluders rather than the excluded”11 and that
Asian Americans have been the objects, rather than the subjects, of history, Daniels argues for a
“reversal of past trends” in order to shift the focus “to the oppressed rather than the
oppressors.”12 Though he focuses mainly on historiographical evolution, Daniels also touches
upon the myths and stereotypes which have plagued Asian American peoples and the writing of
Asian American history. Negative stereotypes about Chinese laborers, Japanese citizens, and
other East Asian groups are an indispensable part of Asian American history as much as more
recent and supposedly positive views of Asian Americans as the model minority. Through his
discussion on Mary Roberts Coolidge’s Chinese Immigrants, (1909) which he cites as the “first
full-scale treatment of the Chinese in the United States,”13 Daniels also briefly mentions the
supposed unassimilability of the Chinese in relation to Coolidge’s attempts to dispel the notion.
Daniels does not focus extensively on these issues, yet his mentions set them up as ideas to pay
attention to in the writing of Asian American history.
Daniels’ conclusion is hopeful, as he looks to role of colleges and academics in
advancing the body of work surrounding Asian Americans. Acknowledging the role of rising
Asian American enrollment in universities on the field, Daniels optimistically states that even a
small proportion of currently enrolled students can have a great impact on the underdeveloped
field. Stating that “the most obvious need is for a reversal of past trends,”14 Daniels emphasizes
11 Daniels 458
12 Daniels 472
13 Daniels 455
14 Daniels 472

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the necessity of turning the focus of Asian American studies to Asian American peoples
themselves and their experiences. This concept and the urgency surrounding it appears in other
works as authors continue to address problematic aspects of pre-existing Asian American
histories. Though it may sound simple, refocusing Asian American history comes with its own
set of problems, especially those concerning representation. While Daniels’ article does not offer
a direct solution, he sees the growing field of Asian American studies as the vehicle for change.15
Like Daniels’ work, Ronald Takaki’s Strangers from a Different Shore addresses the
focus of previous narratives surrounding Asian American history. However, Takaki mainly does
this through constructing a narrative which runs parallel to that of the dominant, anglo-
American, portrayals of American history. The influence of Takaki’s upbringing in Hawai’i is
evident throughout his work and plays a major role in the focus and nature of his scholarship.
Strangers from a Different Shore opens on a personal note, with Takaki narrating through some
of his early experience as a child growing up in a culturally and ethnically diverse setting, as well
as his transition into life in a homogenous mainland town for college. Throughout the book,
Takaki integrates stories from Hawai’i which have largely been sidestepped or ignored in the
dominant narrative of Asian American history. Takaki also interweaves personal testimony and
accounts into the archival knowledge which he presents in his work, culminating in a richer and
more nuanced portrait of Asian American peoples and histories. This emphasis on personal
testimony is echoed by other writers and provides tools with which to tease out the stories of
individuals who have never been treated as such, and in doing so, empowering Asian American
history.
15 Daniels 472

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From the arrival of East Asian immigrants in the early 19th century to the present day, the
Asian and Asian American population has fluctuated greatly depending on the political climate
and societal demands of the times. Though East Asians made up less than one percent of the
population in the 1970 census, more than half of that one percent resided in California in
Hawai’i.16 However, Takaki points out in the closing chapter of Strangers from a Different
Shore’s revised 1998 edition that the Asian American population boomed between the 1970 and
1980 censuses, growing 108% compared to the next fastest growing demographic, Hispanics at
53%.17 Takaki, Daniels, and Omi all also note the rising presence of Asian Americans in college
enrollments and the following influence of these students on university practices and structures.
However, Takaki also points out that “statistics do not stir insightful or imaginative thinking
about what will happen to Asian Americans in the coming century.”18 Statistics merely provide
helpful tools which can contribute to the telling of, but never fully portray, neglected histories.
Through his employment of autobiographical works, interviews, songs, poetry, and more,
Takaki constructs an image of Asian Americans lacking throughout previous scholarship in the
field: Asian Americans as people, individuals with choices, thoughts, desires, and as active
agents in their own rights. This shortcoming of academic work is one which multiple authors
address, such as Daniels’ description of the focus of scholarship on Asian Americans towards
whom that focus goes. In Sucheng Chan’s article, she notes that Asian American immigrants and
their descendants were “seldom portrayed as individuals with personalities, motives, or
agency”19 in the previous periods of Asian American historiography she identifies. Through his
16 Daniels 452
17 Takaki 492
18 Takaki 493
19 Chan, Sucheng. “The Writing of Asian American History”. OAH Magazine of History 10.4
(1996): 8–17. Web. 1.

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use of personal testimony, Takaki moves to counter this and other notions of Asian Americans
not simply as viewed by historians, but by greater American culture. In countering these
depictions of Asian Americans, Takaki also challenges the myths and perceptions about Asians
in America: the sojourner myth of Asian immigrants coming to America to earn money before
returning home; the stereotyping of Asian culture and Asian peoples as passive and lacking the
aggression necessary in administrative work20; the fear and indignation over Asian immigrants
supposedly stealing American jobs; the creation of a new myth, the present day model minority,
lauded for supposedly overcoming great hardship to embody the American Dream; the
perception of Asian Americans as perpetual strangers, regardless of birthplace, nationality, native
language, or childhood residence. All of these ideas have taken center stage in the discussion
about Asian Americans at some point in time, and Takaki discusses these myths and the
consequences of their ubiquity in mainstream American culture in his book. In particular, Takaki
works to dispel the idea of the model minority. Pointing out that the “success” of Asian
Americans has been decontextualized and that Asian American populations tend to be
concentrated in areas with not only higher incomes, but also higher costs of living, Takaki also
highlights the income disparity between different East Asian ethnicities compared to one
another, in addition to white salaries.21
Throughout his work, Takaki presents these types of fact-based analyses side by side with
individual accounts of life as an Asian immigrant or Asian American. In the opening chapter of
Strangers, Takaki narrates the history of Hawai’i’s sugar plantation labor force. Presenting a
slew of numbers to illustrate the significance of sugar cane on Hawai’i’s economy, accounting
20 Takaki 476
21 Takaki 475

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for $15.4 million out of an export total $16.2 million.22 As he launches into an explanation of
how planters located and exploited Asian immigrant labor, Takaki describes the goals of
workforce diversity: to prevent unification amongst the workers, to pit the different ethnic groups
against one another, and to more effectively control the workforce.23 Directly following this
explanation of planters’ motives, Takaki turns to the hopes and dreams of the immigrant workers
themselves, such as the Chinese laborers who left for America as wah gung, hoping to return
home after a few years with new wealth.24 This section incorporates descriptions by Chinese
migrants of the hardships they endured and the desperation which drove them to migration.
Citing starvation and poverty as some of the motivations for the “emigrating spirit,” Takaki
includes both interview style narration and poetry as sources of these accounts. Takaki’s
approach and narrative style fleshes out the skeleton of experiences which statistics can provide.
In her 1996 article “The Writing of Asian American History,” Sucheng Chan points out
that, although various Asian ethnic groups have immigrated to and lived in the United States
since the 19th century, the writing of history surrounding these groups is a fairly recent practice
and that “until the early 1960s, virtually none of the books written about Asians in America were
written by historians.”25 This dearth of historical, or even strictly academic, work on Asian
Americans presents a challenge for present historians, who must “laboriously excavate widely
scattered, fragmentary, ‘buried’ evidence” and at the same time “correct biased interpretations
and a great deal of misinformation.”26 Like Daniels, Chan breaks down the writing of Asian
American into periods. Her four periods, as well as the writers and motives for doing Asian
22 Takaki 24
23 Takaki 25-27
24 Takaki 31
25 Chan 13
26 Chan 8

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American history, help to elaborate on the difficulties of present day work on Asian American
history by providing contextual information on how previous histories have been written. With
this context, the motives and structures behind these works can begin to be uncovered and
analyzed not as factual knowledge about Asian Americans, but as documents portraying previous
mindsets and approaches towards Asians in America.
Chan’s first period runs from roughly the 1870s through the 1920s, characterized by
partisan writings. Social scientists dominated the second period, beginning in the 1910s and
lasting through the 1960s, while revisionist works appeared in the third period of the 1960s
through the early 1980s. The present period, beginning in the 1980s and lasting into Chan’s
present day, is the “coming of age” of Asian American historiography in Chan’s mind.27
Chan’s periodization of Asian American historiography aligns with the work of Takaki
and Daniels, with Asian American immigrants and their descendants being denied collective
identities under scholarship during the first three historiographical periods. “To catch glimpses of
[Asian American] humanity,” Chan writes, “one must turn to books containing their direct
testimonies."28 Takaki’s Strangers from a Different Shore predates Chan’s article, yet it
beautifully illustrates and aligns with Chan’s ideas about how to frame Asian American history.
As the success of Takaki’s writing demonstrates, combining the personal with the archival can
produce powerful results with the ability to inform and reform ideas about Asian American
history.
Published in the same year as Chan’s article, Michael Omi’s “Teaching, Situating, and
Interrogating Asian American History” turns the focus from the writing of Asian American
27 Chan 8
28 Chan 13

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history to the teaching of Asian American history. As he thoughtfully traces the decade-long
evolution of his introduction to Asian American studies course at UC Berkeley, Omi identifies
several catalysts for the changes in his course of both administrative and cultural natures. Two of
the prominent causes that Omi discusses are university general requirements and the rapidly
shifting demographic makeup of college campuses. Each has contributed to shaping not only the
course itself, but also Omi’s own views on Asian American history. The conflicts and
conversations contained within Omi’s course planning can also represent some of the larger
discourses and complications surrounding Asian American histories.
UC Berkeley’s general requirements played a large role in shaping Omi’s course, and in
raising several questions regarding university treatment of minority issues: how do institutions of
higher learning shape our perceptions of minority and marginalized groups? How do university
requirements direct curriculums and course material? Do these requirements diminish the quality
of learning for more engaged or experienced students, due to the presence of disengaged peers in
many of the lower level, requirement filling courses? Do these courses and requirements actually
serve the demographics which they address or do they perpetuate pre-existing stereotypes and
notions about these groups? How does the structuring of university divisions and distinctions
(i.e.: “African Americans, indigenous peoples of the United States, Asian Americans,
Chicano/Latino Americans, and European Americans” at Berkeley29) inform our ideas about
difference and imaginations of the world? These questions, and more, are critical considerations,
as the present and future work addressing not only Asian American but also minority groups,
histories, and issues in general has been and is presently being shaped by these college
requirements.
29 Omi 19

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In addition to college requirements, Omi identifies the “shifting demographic
composition”30 as the most difficult aspect of teaching the course, adding that the varied class
levels, interests, abilities, academic experience, and racial composition of the class have all also
contributed to altering the “pitch” of the course. This demographic variety took the course from
“an attempt to situate Asian American history within the broader context of US history”31 to an
organization based around racial formation, “the sociohistorical process by which racial
categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.”32
Initially bound by certain restrictions due to the course satisfying a general requirement
in American history, Omi’s course painted Asian American history with broad strokes. With the
revision and abolition of this American history requirement, Omi’s course shifted, focusing not
only on the American-to-Asian actions and reactions during eras such as the Great Depression or
World War II, but also on collective and individual Asian American responses to these events
and their own conditions. However, Berkeley’s implementation of a new “breadth” general
requirement spurred new considerations for Omi in teaching the course. Though the course did
not and would not fulfill the requirement, Omi states that it made him “think about how to
integrate the experiences of other groups,”33 particularly relationships between Asian groups and
other minority groups, into the course and challenging the prevalent white/minority group binary
present in education. Omi concludes by stating that “the teaching of Asian American history is
always unfinished,”34 acknowledging the centrality of continuing challenges in the field and the
changes necessary to work through these problems.
30 Omi 18
31 Omi 18
32 Omi 20
33 Omi 19
34 Omi 22

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In “The More Things Change: Paradigm Shifts in Asian American Studies,” Stephen
Sumida examines the frameworks used to study Asian Americans and the problems of identity
within depictions of Asian Americans both by non-Asian and Asian writers. Key to Sumida’s
analysis is the idea of assimilation, and the assimilation paradigm haunting Asians in America
since their arrival to the country. This essentialist viewpoint casts East versus West and, as
Sumida points out, has been used “to alienate Asian Americans within the United States.”35
Regardless of birthplace, of language, of race, and of time and circumstance, this assimilation
paradigm has prevented Asian peoples of all ethnicities from full citizenship in the American
imagination. The assimilationist paradigm enforces the idea of fundamental racial and cultural
difference and mutual exclusivity between the identities “Asian” and “American.” Thus, Asian
Americans become trapped in a liminal state, destined to never be accepted as fully American
while at the same time often lacking a fully “Asian” identity due to their American births,
upbringings, or attempts to assimilate. Assimilation depends not upon the views of those
attempting to assimilate, but upon the thoughts of those whom belong natively to the culture; as
long as the white narrative views Asian Americans, or any other minority group, as
unassimilated they will remain so despite their best efforts.
While he looks to Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers, co-edited by
Frank Chin in 1974, as a critical work attacking the “dual identity” concept, Sumida
acknowledges the fact that this was not the first work to do so. According to Sumida, the
anthology’s editors claim that Aiiieeeee! contains works which demonstrate the existence of “an
Asian American literary ‘tradition’ of works that expose and resist racist mechanisms”36 used to
35 Sumida, Stephen H. “The More Things Change: Paradigm Shifts in Asian American
Studies”. American Studies International 38.2 (2000): 97–114. Web. 98.
36 Sumida 98

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dominate Asians in America stretching back at least 80 years. Aiiieeeee!, published in the same
year as Roger Daniels’ article “American Historians and East Asian Immigrants” both indicate a
shifting approach, or at the very least a desire for a new approach, to Asian history in the United
States. In his article, Daniels traces the lineage of writings about Asian Americans, while
Aiiieeeee! focuses on Asian American writings themselves; each work serves as a critique to the
extant scholarship on Asian Americans and searches for a redirection and re-imagination of the
lives of Asians and their influences on America. This desire for a new approach is echoed
throughout the work of the writers in Chan’s present-day, fourth historiographical era and serves
as a driving force behind much of this work.
In The China Mystique, Karen Leong examines the lives and works of Pearl S. Buck,
Anna May Wong, and Mayling Soong and the impact of each woman on American perceptions
of China and of Chinese peoples. Defining the “China mystique” as “an American ideology that
incorporated notions of ‘modern women’ and a more pluralistic U.S. national community in the
production of a new China.”37 Arguing that the three women she focuses on were the
embodiment of the China mystique in the American consciousness, Leong examines the
influence of American perceptions of China and the Chinese affected each woman, and “on how
each woman actively negotiated these perceptions.”38 Using the lives and experiences of these
women as lenses through which to view the development of American Orientalism in the first
half of the 20th century, Leong portrays both American ideas about China and the three women
themselves as agents, acting upon and interacting with one another. However, as Buck, Wong,
and Soong moved between the two countries, each became profoundly familiar with the
37 Leong, Karen J. The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong, and the
Transformation of American Orientalism. Berkeley, CA: U of California, 2005. Print. 2.
38 Leong 4

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contradictions involved with the US-China Orientalist relationship; though race, gender,
nationality, and publicity enabled each woman’s success, these same factors also limited the
scope and effectiveness of these accomplishments.
Much like Asian Americans throughout American history, Buck, Wong, and Soong
existed in a liminal state in the American imagination. Buck’s whiteness in combination with her
upbringing in China gave her a commanding authority over the country’s perceptions of China
and Chinese people. Conversely, Wong, an American-raised daughter of Chinese immigrants,
was forever regarded as an outsider despite her upbringing in California; by virtue of her
Chinese-ness, she represented China as an object and a focus. On the first page of Strangers from
a Different Shore, Takaki discusses the misconceptions around his own citizenship and the
questions about origin he faced when attending the College of Wooster. According to Leong,
“whiteness fundamentally Chinese devalued Chinese culture and restricted Chinese Americans
from full participation in the American political polity.”39
From Daniels to Leong, similar or continuous ideas appear throughout scholarship on
Asian American history and its writing. Each author highlights the Other-ness of Asian peoples
in American society, the long held perceptions of Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners or
half-baked citizens but never as truly American regardless of one’s heritage. These authors also
pay close attention to other myths and ideas about Asian Americans, such as the assimilation
paradigm and the idea of the dual identity. For this collection of authors, personal testimony
plays a critical role in beginning to dispel and overturn assumptions about Asian Americans.
In 2016, Asian American studies are now nearly 50 years old. Even so, the majority of
present day departments and programs are mainly situated on the West Coast, in locations with
39 Leong 161

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high concentrations of Asian American populations and enrollments. Despite high Asian
American student enrollment in prestigious East Coast institutions such as Harvard, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Johns Hopkins, remain hesitant to include Asian
American studies programs into their curriculums;40 instead, these courses are relegated to the
East Asian studies departments, reinforcing the notion of interchangability between Asian
Americans and East Asians regardless of birth and upbringing and the perpetual foreigner status
of Asians in America. As the six authors discussed in this paper highlight, individual experience
and personal agency has long been absent from Asian American history, both in real time
experiences and later studies. Asian Americans made up 5.6% of the US population in the 2010
census;41 perhaps by continuing to challenge views of Asian Americans and presenting new
frameworks and methods with which to examine Asian American history in the fashion of
Daniels, Takaki, Chan, Omi, Sumida, and Leong, present and future historians alike can help
bring Asian Americans fully into American society. Writing these new histories and continuing
to raise questions can, bit by bit, work towards dispelling the perception of Asian Americans as
perpetual foreigners and place choice and agency back into the hands of Asian Americans to
define who these peoples were, are, and desire to become.
40 Wang
41 Humes, Karen R.; Jones, Nicholas A.; Ramirez, Roberto R. (March 2011). "Overview of Race
and Hispanic Origin: 2010" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. United States Department of
Commerce. Retrieved May 11, 2016.