Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture

by Gary Y. Okihiro

In a thoughtful and stimulating contribution to the current debate about the meaning to the larger society of multiculturalism, Gary Okihiro explores the significance of Asian Americans in American history and culture. In six provocative and engaging essays he examines the Asian American experience from the perspectives of historical consciousness, race, gender, class, and culture.

While exploring anew the meanings of Asian American social history, the book argues that the core values and ideals of the nation emanate today not from the so-called mainstream but from the margins, from among Asian and African Americans, Latinos and American Indians, and women. Those groups in their struggles for equality, have helped to preserve and advance the founders’ ideals and have made America a more democratic place for all.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Race

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Erin Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic and compelling read. Good introduction to Asian American Studies that moves beyond the realm of identity politics.

[Eric V · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes incredibly logically sound arguments, with some fantastic stand out quotes. Interesting book, although a bit dense. Read for Asian American Literature class.

"During the late 1870s and early 1880s, when a Chinese exclusion bill was being debated in the Congress, Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi, the lone African American senator, spoke out and voted against the discriminatory legislation, and the Christian Recorder, an African American newspaper in Boston, editorialized:
"Only a few years ago the cry was, not The Chinese must go,' but "The niggers must go' and it came from the same strata of society. There is not a man to-day who rails out against the yellow man from China but would equally rail out against the black man if opportunity only afforded." From Chapter 2.

"The "American dilemma," and by extension the white man's dilemma, was the yawning gap between the rhetoric of democracy and equality and the reality of oppression and exploitation and, importantly, the claims of nonwhite peoples to the promise of the American creed." From Chapter 5.

[Jonathan Jalbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okihiro writes passionately about the centrality of Asian Americans throughout American history and how their experiences on the margins of American society have shaped and expanded the ideals of the nation.

The book is a bit dense and gets a bit bogged down by abstract ideas described with lots of big words. (Chapter 6 is the exception, which felt much better structured.) But even in the slog of academic writing, there are a lot of beautiful, undertold stories throughout this book, and it’s inspiring and troubling to see how Okihiro’s words still ring true today, over thirty years after this book was published.

[Elizabeth Gunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

*read for school

Even though I was assigned this, I believe it is such an important read to further ones education on the history of America that just isn’t taught in mainstream media or public education.

[thecaffeinatedcapricorn]

Read for my Twentieth and Twenty First Century Literature class

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this as a work but I would gladly read an updated version as mentioned in the new foreward.

[Tara Duong · Rating 4 out of 5]

such a comprehensive historical collection and commentary wow

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okihiro collected six of his lectures into a fine primer on Asian Studies-- I only wish it was much longer! He regularly emphasises the (often gravely unappreciated) central importance of women, not only in Asian societies and communities, but in American society at large. Asian-American women often faced sexism at home and racism abroad, quite a catch-22 of bigotry. Okihiro also stresses the perceptual dichotomy with which America's status quo views Asians and, inevitably, Asian-Americans: as simultaneously passive and threatening, decadent and devious, effete and warlike... indeed, everything the Persians were very deliberately portrayed as in the pro-"War on Terror" Randroid muscle-epic 300.
Though brave mentions are made of the Japanese Internment of 1942, I thought the issue for Asians on both sides of the Pacific of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their aftermath seemed, in retrospect, glaringly absent. It would be unfair to expect a single, specific volume to cover Asian-American issues definitively, and I am following this with (among others) Hiroshima In America: A Half Century of Denial, by Robert J. Lifton and Greg Mitchell.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though this is a series of lectures and thus published in a different style, this tends to be quite an accessible work and maps out the larger questions of Asian American history, including the position of women, the difference or sameness betweem model minority and yellow peril, interracial connections, and other such major thematics. Definitely something to pick up if you haven't had a chance to get yourself acquainted with Asian American history.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great experimental work that suggests new avenues of study for understanding the Asian American experience.