Celebrating Diversity: Asian American and Pacific Islander Month

The Color of Success tells of the astonishing transformation of Asians in the United States from the "yellow peril" to "model minorities"--peoples distinct from the white majority but lauded as well-assimilated, upwardly mobile, and exemplars of traditional family values--in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Summary taken from book.

How Hawai'i became an emblem of multiculturalism during its journey to statehood in the mid-twentieth century Gateway State explores the development of Hawai'i as a model for liberal multiculturalism and a tool of American global power in the era of decolonization. The establishment of Hawai'i statehood in 1959 was a watershed moment, not only in the ways Americans defined their nation's role on the international stage but also in the ways they understood the problems of social difference at home. Summary taken from book.

'Growing Up Asian American in Young Adult Fiction' focuses on moving beyond stereotypes to examine how Asian American children and adolescents define their unique identities. Summary taken from book.

Salam examines how second generation South Asian Americans assimilate by analyzing their family experiences, their structural circumstances and their adult life choice through the lens of arranged marriage. Summary taken from book.

Written by a senior scholar and master mariner, Sailors and Traders is the first comprehensive account of the maritime peoples of the Pacific. Summary taken from book.

This is the story of four mothers and their daughters-- Chinese-American women, the mothers born in China, and the daughters born in America. Summary taken from book.

Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world -- conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. The Namesake brilliantly illuminates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations. Summary taken from book.

May and Pearl, two sisters living in Shanghai in the mid-1930s, are beautiful, sophisticated, and well-educated, but their family is on the verge of bankruptcy. Hoping to improve their social standing, May and Pearl's parents arrange for their daughters to marry Gold Mountain men who have come from Los Angeles to find brides. But when the sisters leave China and arrive at Angel's Island (the Ellis Island of the West) where they are detained, interrogated, and humiliated for months they feel the harsh reality of leaving home. Summary taken from book.

In the United States, perhaps no minority group is considered as successful as the Asian American community which is often described as residing in positive-sounding "ethnic enclaves, "rather than in "ghettoes. "In this volume, Yoonmee Chang exposes the unspoken class inequalities faced by Asian Americans, while insightfully analyzing the effect such nations have had on their literary voices. Summary taken from book.