Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People

I remember as a young child, other kids would ask me, "Where are you from?" Even though I was a native U.S. citizen, I would answer "Korea" without even thinking about it. Their response would be a blank stare and a "Where?" They all knew China, and even Japan, but rarely Korea. I grew up thinking that I was from a place that no one knew existed. Now when people ask me, "Where are you from?" I answer "Los Angeles," and I receive the response, "You know what I mean. Really, where are you from?" This question has plagued me throughout my life. People assume I cannot simply be an American - I must be a foreigner.What Helen Zia has done is taken this universal experience among Asian Americans and transformed it into a quest to learn what it means to be Asian and American. She examines pivotal points in Asian American history and acknowledges racism, but also examines what Asian Americans must do as a whole to become seen as "American" and not as a "gook" or a "chink." As a college student who's done a little bit of research on Asian Americans, it enlightened me on my responsibilites to make my voice heard and also educated me on the history of the Asian American Civil Rights Movement - something that didn't even exist 60 years ago.

Asian American Dreams is really a touching book. It is touching not because it is a fiction with many moving plots and the hero or heroin possesses moving characteristics --- strictly speaking it is not a fiction --- but because it provides a description, a statement, a confession from the perspective of an Asian American woman writer who exposes so unelaborated, so frankly, so honestly, her innocent feelings about her being as an Asian American. Helen Zia, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, born in New Jersey, grew up in the fifties when there were only 150, 000 Chinese Americans in the entire country. As an award-winning journalist who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, Zia has covered Asian American communities and social and political movements for more than twenty years. Different from the other minorities groups, she assumed what Chinese Americans wished to be was not how to preserve their cultural identity, instead, they tried to explore by what they could be made a fully American. However, she was obviously dissatisfied with she was forever conceived as an "alien" even she was born in New Jersey. "There is a drill," she wrote, " that nearly all Asians in America have experienced more times than they can count. Total strangers will interrupt with the absurdly existential question ‘What are you?’ Or the equally common inquiry ‘Where are your from?’ Their queries are generally well intentioned, made in the same detached manner that you might use to inquire about a pooch’s breed."....She clearly pointed out a situation that Asian Americans, particularly Chinese Americans, had been facing in the American setting. There had been stereotyped ideologies unaccommodating the political and social status of Chinese Americans. Some of the stereotyped concepts were unintended, nothing malicious. They perhaps were just a product of social interactions between different social, ethnic groups, each of which holding a culture-based (or maybe ethnic-chauvinism) point of view. However, some of those problems might have emerged because of the social, political, historical and economic reality.....Zia also described Asians Americans as an American minority, which could not evade from being racially and ethnically distinguished. A paragraph in his book touched upon the issue of equity:"Comparison between the casting of Morgan Freeman and Jonathan Pryce also overlook the once common practice of Caucasian actors using make-up to darken their skins to play people of color, while, at the same time, other actors were barred from roles solely because of the color of their skin. To further suggest that Equity advocates the narrow-minded view that Jews can only play Jews, or Italians can only play Italians, or any similar casting that is drawn strictly along racial or ethnic lines, totally distorts the issue. Jews have always been able to play Italians, Italians have always been able to play Jews, and both have always been able to play Asian. Asian actors, however,

We had the good fortune to have Ms. Zia come speak in our community as part of her tour for this book. I was particularly struck at this event by her realistic assessment of where Asian America comes from, has been, and is going. This vision is reflected in this wonderful book. "Asian American Dreams" looks at both the diversity within Asian America, and at the problematic place of Asians and Asian Americans in our bipolar (typically Black/White) racial dialogue. Ms. Zia begins each chapter with an anecdotal essay which allows us to glimpse her good humor, and for those of us raised outside of traditional Asian America, to see similarities with our own experiences that we hadn't thought to look for in the past. I highly recommend this book for everyone with an interest in "American" culture, society and racial/ethnic dialogue.

I've read a lot of books from Asian American studies about the history and experience of Asians in this country, and this book by far does the best job of relating both our recent history and how it affects us as a distinct minority group within the US. I think it will go a long way to helping the majority "get it" about Asian Americans--finally!