Chains of Babylon : the rise of Asian America / Daryl J. Maeda.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Maeda, Daryl J.

Series:

Critical American studies series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Third World Liberation Front.

Asian Americans--Politics and government--20th century.

Asian Americans.

Asian Americans--Social conditions--20th century.

Asian Americans--Ethnic identity.

Political activists--United States--History--20th century.

Political activists.

Social movements--United States--History--20th century.

Social movements.

History.

Asian Americans--Social conditions.

Asian Americans--Politics and government.

United States.

Third World Liberation Front--History.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Protest movements--United States.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975.

African Americans--Relations with Asian Americans.

African Americans.

United States--Race relations--History--20th century.

Race relations.

United States--Social conditions--20th century.

Social conditions.

Physical Description:

xviii, 203 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2009]

Summary:

In Chains of Babylon, Daryl J. Maeda presents a cultural history of Asian American activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, showing how the movement created the category of "Asian American" to join Asians of many ethnicities in racial solidarity. Drawing on the Black Power and antiwar movements, Asian American radicals argued that all Asians in the United States should resist assimilation and band together to oppose racism within the country and imperialism abroad.

As revealed in Maeda's in-depth work, the Asian American movement contended that people of all Asian ethnicities in the United States shared a common relationship to oppression and exploitation with each other and with other nonwhite peoples. In the early stages of the civil rights era, the possibility of assimilation was held out to Asian Americans under a model minority myth. Maeda insists that it was only in the disruption of that myth for both African Americans and Asian Americans in the 1960s and 1970s that the full Asian American culture and movement he describes could emerge. Maeda challenges accounts of the post-1968 era as hopelessly divisive by examining how racial and cultural identity enabled Asian Americans to see eye-to-eye with and support other groups of color in their campaigns for social justice.

Contents:

Before Asian America

"Down with Hayakawa!" : assimilation vs. third world solidarity at San Francisco State College

Black Panthers, Red Guards, and Chinamen : constructing Asian American identity through performing blackness

"Are we not also Asians?" : building solidarity through opposition to the Viet Nam war

Performing radical culture : a grain of sand and the language of liberty

Conclusion : fighting for the heart of Asian America.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780816648900

0816648905

9780816648917

0816648913

OCLC:

320434840