Disoriented : Asian Americans, law, and the nation-state / Robert S. Chang.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chang, Robert S.

Series:

Critical America

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Asian Americans--Legal status, laws, etc.

Asian Americans.

Race discrimination--Law and legislation--United States.

Race discrimination.

Race discrimination--Law and legislation.

United States.

Asian Americans--Social conditions.

Physical Description:

x, 180 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [1999]

Summary:

Does "Asian American" denote an ethnic or racial identification? Is a person of mixed ancestry, the child of Euro- and Asian American parents, Asian American? What does it mean to refer to first generation Hmong refugees and fifth generation Chinese Americans both as Asian American?

In Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation State, Robert Chang examines the current discourse on race and law and the implications of postmodern theory and affirmative action -- all of which have largely excluded Asian Americans -- in order to develop a theory of critical Asian American legal studies.

Demonstrating that the ongoing debate surrounding multiculturalism and immigration in the U.S. is really a struggle over the meaning of "America, " Chang reveals how the construction of Asian American-ness has become a necessary component in stabilizing a national American identity -- a fact Chang criticizes as harmful to Asian Americans. Defining the many "borders" that operate in positive and negative ways to construct America as we know it, Chang analyzes the position of Asian Americans within America's black/white racial paradigm, how "the family" operates as a stand-in for race and nation, and how the figure of the immigrant embodies a central contradiction in allegories of America.

Contents:

Dreaming in Black and white: racial-sexual policing in The birth of a Nation, The cheat, and Who Killed Vincent Chin?

Centering the immigrant in the inter/national imagination

Why we need a critical Asian American legal studies

Narrative space

A narrative account of Asian America

Mapping Asian American legal studies

Reverse racism! : affirmative action, the family, and the dream that is America

One America : an essay in three parts.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 139-171) and index.

ISBN:

0814715214

OCLC:

40559797