Mary Paik Lee left her native country in 1905, traveling with her parents as a political refugee after Japan imposed control over Korea. Her father worked in the sugar plantations of Hawaii briefly before taking his family to California. They shared the poverty-stricken existence endured by thousands of Asian immigrants in the early twentieth century, working as farm laborers, cooks, janitors, and miners. Lee recounts racism on the playground and the ravages of mercury mining on her father's health, but also entrepreneurial successes and hardships surmounted with grace. With a new foreword by David K. Yoo, this edition reintroduces Quiet Odyssey to readers interested in Asian American history and immigration studies. The volume includes thirty illustrations and a comprehensive introduction and bibliographic essay by respected scholar Sucheng Chan, who collaborated closely with Lee to edit the biography and ensure the work was true to the author's intended vision. This award-winning book provides a compelling firsthand account of early Korean American history and continues to be an essential work in Asian American studies.

After emerging from the tumult of social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the field of Asian American studies has enjoyed rapid and extraordinary growth. Nonetheless, many aspects of Asian American history still remain open to debate. The Oxford Handbook of Asian American History offers the first comprehensive commentary on the state of the field, simultaneously assessing where Asian American studies came from and what the future holds. In this volume, thirty leading scholars offer original essays on a wide range of topics. The chapters trace Asian American history from the beginning of the migration flows toward the Pacific Islands and the American continent to Japanese American incarceration and Asian American participation in World War II, from the experience of exclusion, violence, and racism to the social and political activism of the late twentieth century. The authors explore many of the key aspects of the Asian American experience, including politics, economy, intellectual life, the arts, education, religion, labor, gender, family, urban development, and legal history. The Oxford Handbook of Asian American History demonstrates how the roots of Asian American history are linked to visions of a nation marked by justice and equity and to a deep effort to participate in a global project aimed at liberation. The contributors to this volume attest to the ongoing importance of these ideals, showing how the mass politics, creative expressions, and the imagination that emerged during the 1960s are still relevant today. It is an unprecedentedly detailed portrait of Asian Americans and how they have helped change the face of the United States.

In Envisioning Religion, Race, and Asian Americans, David K. Yoo and Khyati Y. Joshi put together a wide-ranging and important collection of essays documenting the intersections of race and religion and Asian American communities - a combination so often missing both in the scholarly literature and in public discourse. Issues of religion and race/ethnicity undergird current national debates around immigration, racial profiling, and democratic freedoms, but these issues, as the contributors document, are longstanding ones in the United States. The essays included in the volume feature dimensions of traditions such as Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism as well as how religion engages with topics such as religious affiliation (or lack thereof), the legacy of the Vietnam War, and popular culture. The contributors also address the role of survey data, pedagogy, methodology, and literature that is richly complementary and necessary for understanding the scope and range of the subject of Asian American religions. These essays attest to the vibrancy and diversity of Asian American religions, while at the same time situating these conversations in a scholarly lineage and discourse. This collection will certainly serve as an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and general readers with interests in Asian American religions in fields such as ethnic and Asian American studies, religious studies, American studies, and related fields that focus on immigration and race.

California Dreaming is a multi-genre collection featuring works by Asian American artists based in California. Exploring the places of "Asian America" through the migration and circulation of the arts, this volume highlights creative processes and the flow of objects to understand the rendering of California's imaginary. Here, "California" is interpreted as both a specific locale and an identity marker that moves, linking the state's cultural imaginary, labor, and economy with Asia Pacific, the Americas, and the world. Together, the works in this collection shift previous models and studies of the "Golden State" as the embodiment of "frontier mentality" and the discourse of exceptionality to a translocal, regional, and archipelagic understanding of place and cultural production. The poems, visual essays, short stories, critical essays, interviews, artist statements, and performance text excerpts featured in this collection expand notions of where knowledge is produced, directing our attention to the particularity of California's landscape and labor in the production of arts and culture. An interdisciplinary collection, California Dreaming foregrounds "sensing" and "imagining" place, vividly, as it hopes to inspire further creative responses to the notion of emplacement. In doing so, California Dreaming explores the possibilities imagined by and through Asian American arts and culture today, paving the way for what is yet to be.

Out of the Dust is a collection of new poems by activist, leader, poet, and editor Janice Mirikitani. After being named San Francisco's second Poet Laureate in 2000, this fifth book of poems from Mirikitani was written in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Drawing from her own background as a Sansei (third generation) Japanese American, Mirikitani reflects on the many ways we connect through the dust and our ability to rise and renew ourselves from this place. From the dust of the World Trade Center in New York to the retaliatory ashes of the dead in America's war in Afghanistan, the poems in this volume seek to explicate the connections of our humanity to the reactionary profiling of people of Middle Eastern descent and different ethnicities, comparing these choices to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Mirikitani's poems cover topics about rape, incest, the continued struggle for justice and economic equality, and the poet's experiences throughout her 50-year career at Glide Foundation and Church in San Francisco, where she has helped to create groundbreaking programs for the poor, women and children, and those who are healing from sexual assault, violence and abuse. Though constructed from a depth of experiences with struggle, these poems also erupt in celebration of marriage, daughters, and the discovery of self through diversity.

In Envisioning Religion, Race, and Asian Americans, David K. Yoo and Khyati Y. Joshi assemble a wide-ranging and important collection of essays documenting the intersections of race and religion and Asian American communities - a combination so often missing both in the scholarly literature and in public discourse. Issues of religion and race/ethnicity undergird current national debates around immigration, racial profiling, and democratic freedoms, but these issues, as the contributors document, are longstanding ones in the United States. The essays feature dimensions of traditions such as Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism, as well as how religion engages with topics that include religious affiliation (or lack thereof), the legacy of the Vietnam War, and popular culture. The contributors also address the role of survey data, pedagogy, methodology, and literature that is richly complementary and necessary for understanding the scope and range of the subject of Asian American religions. These essays attest to the vibrancy and diversity of Asian American religions, while at the same time situating these conversations in a scholarly lineage and discourse. This collection will certainly serve as an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and general readers with interests in Asian American religions, ethnic and Asian American studies, religious studies, American studies, and related fields that focus on immigration and race.

The academic field of Asian American history traces its roots to social movements of the late 1960s, when individuals and communities attempted to expand and challenge the existing frame of United States history to take into account their experiences. There were of course people who had documented and written about Asian Americans in earlier eras, but a recognizable field did not develop until the Asian American movement. The publication of Ronald Takaki's Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (1989) and Sucheng Chan's Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (1991) signaled a coming of age for the field in which these narratives of the Asian American past synthesized the literature that had been produced to date. These two landmark works reflected the rise of social history, which stressed the agency of individuals and communities. Historians of many immigrant groups challenged the framework of assimilation and highlighted ethnic retentions. The result was a more nuanced understanding of how immigration had shaped the contours of United States history. The attention paid to the sending countries placed immigration history within a transnational context and underscored global processes linked to labor, capital, and empire. As part of these historical developments, scholars working in Asian American history helped unearth buried pasts. The Asian American movement and post-1965 migrations of Asians to the United States sparked classes, programs, and other developments on college campuses that led to students entering graduate school to specialize in Asian American history. While the Japanese American incarceration during World War II and racial exclusion remain the most documented and analyzed dimensions of Asian American history, the body of scholarship produced over the past two decades or so has deepened and broadened the scope of knowledge. Numerous monographs and anthologies have included a greater number of ethnic groups and issues. The influence of cultural studies, transnationalism, regional diversity, and interdisciplinary and comparative frameworks (to name only a few) has added to the richness of the theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of Asian American history. Nevertheless, there remains much work to be done in the field, given the tremendous internal diversity within this umbrella category. The Oxford Handbook of Asian American History represents an ideal opportunity to engage in state of the field essays that are historiographically informed, but that provide a platform for historians to think creatively about their areas of research expertise. What kinds of questions and issues remain, how do recent developments in related fields affect the historical treatment of Asian America, and what theoretical and methodological concerns have emerged? These questions are merely suggestive of many more that will be asked through the collection's essays. Given the development of the field, the time is ripe for a volume that simultaneously assesses where the scholarship has been and what the future holds.

New Spiritual Homes investigates how religious traditions, movements, and institutions have been vital for Asian Americans, past and present. Through essays, expressive works, and resource materials, it re-frames the religious landscape and brings into view the experiences of Asian Americans. How has religion assisted people in dealing with the upheaval of migration and with other transformations? In what ways has religion been a part of the identity formation of Asian immigrants and their descendants in the United States? How has religion played a role in the formation of Asian diasporas? These questions and many others emerge as the contributors explore the ways individuals and communities have constructed and continue to construct their world-views in light of their religious commitments.

The essays cover an impressive range of topics: Chinese American Protestant nationalism, the development of a Filipino American folk religion, law and religion among American Sikhs, and identity and Taiwanese Buddhism in southern California. Authors seek out what can be discovered at the intersection of religion and gender, race, colonialism, and sexuality. This volume includes an extensive bibliography that will be a vital resource for scholars and students.

Freedom without Justice is a compelling story of one man’s wrongful incarceration and the actions he took to survive ten years in prison, while his supporters fought to win retrial and freedom. As a memoir, it is at once a captivating chronicle of his life with a trenchant description of how prisons end up producing the non-normativity they purport to prevent. This unusual story is part of an important chapter in the post-1964 history of Asian American activism. Chol Soo Lee’s saga begins against a backdrop of great historical change in Asian American communities following the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act. At the age of twelve, Chol Soo immigrated to the United States from South Korea to reunite with his mother, who had arrived earlier as a military bride. In less than a decade, Chol Soo finds himself labeled as a violent criminal, convicted, and incarcerated. Quickly Chol Soo Lee became a rallying point for an extraordinary pan–Asian American movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and Freedom without Justice provides a rare and valuable glimpse into a pivotal moment in history when the Asian American movement united around one of its first major political campaigns. The Lee case brought together immigrants and American-born Asians in a common cause of justice and freedom. This alliance of supporters, organized under a national network of the Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee, included student activists, elderly immigrants, religious organizations, small business owners, white-collar professionals, social workers, lawyers, legal assistance organizations, and left-wing communist groups nationwide. In the end the united front that mobilized to attain social and legal justice for Chol Soo Lee was a remarkable coalition of people from a broad spectrum of social backgrounds that transcended ethnicity, class, political ideology, religion, generation, and language. This diverse grassroots social movement initiated and organized a six-year “Free Chol Soo Lee!” campaign that led to Lee’s historic release from San Quentin’s death row in 1983. Incarcerated during a time when Asian American inmates were scarce, and Korean Americans even scarcer, Lee embodies social realities of race and class inequalities drawing readers into his social worlds—war-torn Korea, the streets of San Francisco, the criminal justice system, prison gang politics, and death row.

Ship of Fate tells the emotionally gripping story of a Vietnamese military officer who evacuated from Saigon in 1975 but made the dramatic decision to return to Vietnam for his wife and children, rather than resettle in the United States without them. Written in Vietnamese in the years just after 1991, when he and his family finally immigrated to the United States, Tran Dinh Tru's memoir provides a detailed and searing account of his individual trauma as a refugee in limbo, and then as a prisoner in the Vietnamese reeducation camps. In April 1975, more than 120,000 Indochinese refugees sought and soon gained resettlement in the United States. Given the chaos of the evacuation, however, approximately 1,500 Vietnamese men and women insisted in no uncertain terms on being repatriated back to Vietnam. Tru was one of these repatriates. To resolve the escalating crisis, the U.S. government granted the Vietnamese a large ship, the Viet Nam Thuong Tin. An experienced naval commander, Tru became the captain of the ship and sailed the repatriates back to Vietnam in October 1975. On return, Tru was imprisoned and underwent forced labor for more than twelve years. Tru's account reveals a hidden history of refugee camps on Guam, internal divisions among Vietnamese refugees, political disputes between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S. government, and the horror of the postwar "reeducation" camps. While there are countless books on the U.S. war in Vietnam, there are still relatively few in English that narrate the war from a Vietnamese perspective. This translation adds new and unexpected dimensions to the U.S. military's final withdrawal from Vietnam.

Ship of Fate tells the emotionally gripping story of a Vietnamese military officer who evacuated from Saigon in 1975 but made the dramatic decision to return to Vietnam for his wife and children, rather than resettle in the United States without them. Written in Vietnamese in the years just after 1991, when he and his family finally immigrated to the United States, Tran Dinh Tru's memoir provides a detailed and searing account of his individual trauma as a refugee in limbo, and then as a prisoner in the Vietnamese reeducation camps. In April 1975, more than 120,000 Indochinese refugees sought and soon gained resettlement in the United States. Given the chaos of the evacuation, however, approximately 1,500 Vietnamese men and women insisted in no uncertain terms on being repatriated back to Vietnam. Tru was one of these repatriates. To resolve the escalating crisis, the U.S. government granted the Vietnamese a large ship, the Viet Nam Thuong Tin. An experienced naval commander, Tru became the captain of the ship and sailed the repatriates back to Vietnam in October 1975. On return, Tru was imprisoned and underwent forced labor for more than twelve years. Tru's account reveals a hidden history of refugee camps on Guam, internal divisions among Vietnamese refugees, political disputes between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S. government, and the horror of the postwar "reeducation" camps. While there are countless books on the U.S. war in Vietnam, there are still relatively few in English that narrate the war from a Vietnamese perspective. This translation adds new and unexpected dimensions to the U.S. military's final withdrawal from Vietnam.

The story of Catholicism and Protestantism in China, Japan, and Korea has been told in great detail. The existing literature is especially rich in documenting church and missionary activities as well as how varied regions and cultures have translated Christian ideas and practices. Less evident, however, are studies that contextualize Christianity within the larger economic, political, social, and cultural developments in each of the three countries and its diasporas. The contributors to Encountering Modernity address such concerns and collectively provide insights into Christianity's role in the development of East Asia and as it took shape among East Asians in the United States. The work brings together studies of Christianity in China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan and its diasporas to expand the field through new angles of vision and interpretation. Its mode of analysis not only results in a deeper understanding of Christianity, but also produces more informed and nuanced histories of East Asian countries that take seriously the structures and sensibilities of religion-broadly understood and within a national and transnational context. It critically investigates how Protestant Christianity was negotiated and interpreted by individuals in Korea, China (with a brief look at Taiwan), and Japan starting in the nineteenth century as all three countries became incorporated into the global economy and the international nation-state system anchored by the West. People in East Asia from various walks of life studied and, in some cases, embraced principles of Christianity as a way to frame and make meaningful the economic, political, and social changes they experienced because of modernity. Encountering Modernity makes a significant contribution by moving beyond issues of missiology and church history to ask how Christianity represented an encounter with modernity that set into motion tremendous changes throughout East Asia and in transnational diasporic communities in the United States.