This book sheds light on experiences relatively underrepresented in academic and non-academic sport history. It examines how Asian and Pacific Islander peoples used American football to maintain a sense of community while encountering racial exclusion, labor exploitation, and colonialism. Through their participation and spectatorship in American football, Asian and Pacific Islander people crossed treacherous cultural frontiers to construct what sociologist Elijah Anderson has called a cosmopolitan canopy under which Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and people of diverse racial and ethnic identities interacted with at least a semblance of respect and equity. And perhaps a surprising number of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have excelled in college and even professional football before the 1960s. Finally, acknowledging the impressive influx of elite Pacific Islander gridders who surfaced in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, it is vital to note as well the racialized nativism shadowing the lives of these athletes.

This book sheds light on experiences relatively underrepresented in academic and non-academic sport history. It examines how Asian and Pacific Islander peoples used American football to maintain a sense of community while encountering racial exclusion, labor exploitation, and colonialism. Through their participation and spectatorship in American football, Asian and Pacific Islander people crossed treacherous cultural frontiers to construct what sociologist Elijah Anderson has called a cosmopolitan canopy under which Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and people of diverse racial and ethnic identities interacted with at least a semblance of respect and equity. And perhaps a surprising number of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have excelled in college and even professional football before the 1960s. Finally, acknowledging the impressive influx of elite Pacific Islander gridders who surfaced in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, it is vital to note as well the racialized nativism shadowing the lives of these athletes.

When Jeremy Lin began to knock down shots for the New York Knicks early in 2012, many Americans became aware for the first time that Asian Americans actually play basketball. Indeed, long before Lin startled the NBA world, Asian Americans have not only played basketball, but have played it with passion and skill. This book provides a comprehensive history of Asian American basketball. It traces how Asian Americans have used basketball to provide them a sense of community. It examines how through basketball Asian Americans have traversed racial and ethnic barriers. It demonstrates that perhaps a surprising number of Asian American have excelled at high school, college, and professional hoops. It reminds readers that it has not always been easy. Asian American basketball was and continues to be played in the shadows cast by an anti-Asian bigotry much too prevalent in historical and contemporary America.

From 1912 to 1916, a group of baseball players from Hawaiʻ i barnstormed the U.S. mainland. While initially all Chinese, the Travelers became more multiethnic and multiracial with ballplayers possessing Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, and European ancestries. As a group and as individuals the Travelers' experiences represent a still much too marginalized facet of baseball and sport history. Arguably, they traveled more miles and played in more ball parks in the American empire than any other group of ballplayers of their time. Outside of the major leagues, they were likely the most famous nine of the 1910s, dominating their college opponents and more than holding their own against top-flight white and black independent teams. And once the Travelers’ journeys were done, a team leader and star Buck Lai gained fame in independent baseball on the East Coast of the U.S., while former teammates ran base paths and ran for political office as they confronted racism and colonialism in Hawaiʻ i.

With the rise of stars such as Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, and now Daisuke Matsuzaka, fans today can easily name players from the island country of Japan. Less widely known is that baseball has long been played on other Pacific islands, in pre-statehood Hawaii, for instance, and in Guam, Samoa and the Philippines. For the multiethnic peoples of these U.S. possessions, the learning of baseball was actively encouraged, some would argue as a means to an unabashedly colonialist end.As early as the deadball era, Pacific Islanders competed against each other and against mainlanders on the diamond, with teams like the Hawaiian Travelers barnstorming the States, winning more than they lost against college, semi-pro, and even professional nines. For those who moved to the mainland, baseball eased the transition, helping Asian Pacific Americans create a sense of community and purpose, cross cultural borders, and - for a few - achieve fame.

Crossing Sidelines, Crossing Cultures crosses disciplines in order to examine an unexplored facet of American racial and ethnic experiences-Asian Pacific American participation in sports. Joel S. Franks examines the experiences of famous and not so famous Asian Pacific American athletes from the late 1800s to the present. Through the stories of athletes such as swimmer Duke Kahanamoku and figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi, Franks demonstrates how Asian Pacific Americans have overcome discrimination and stereotypes to cross the cultural barriers that separate them from other American racial and ethnic groups. This book reveals how the struggles that Asian Pacific Americans face in their desire to assert their cultural citizenship are often expressed through sports.