Illegal immigrants/model minorities : the Cold War of Chinese American narrative
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Bibliographic Information
Illegal immigrants/model minorities : the Cold War of Chinese American narrative
（Asian American history and culture series）
Temple University Press, 2021
- : pbk
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Summary: "Illegal Immigrants/Model Minorities thinks through two figures-the Chinese illegal immigrant and the Chinese model minority-during the Cold War. Reading the two together sheds light on how the discussion of Chinese Americans in both literature and archival materials grapples with these constructs and creates competing usages of and perspectives on Chinese American history"--Provided by publisher
Bibliography: p. [209]-220
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In the Cold War era, Chinese Americans were caught in a double-bind. The widespread stigma of illegal immigration, as it was often called, was most easily countered with the model minority, assimilating and forming nuclear families, but that in turn led to further stereotypes. In Illegal Immigrants/Model Minorities, Heidi Kim investigates how Chinese American writers navigated a strategy to normalize and justify the Chinese presence during a time when fears of Communism ran high.
Kim explores how writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Jade Snow Wong, and C. Y. Lee, among others, addressed issues of history, family, blood purity, and law through then-groundbreaking novels and memoirs. Illegal Immigrants/Model Minorities also uses legal cases, immigration documents, and law as well as mass media coverage to illustrate how writers constructed stories in relation to the political structures that allowed or disallowed their presence, their citizenship, and their blended identity.
Kim illuminates the rapidly shifting political and social pressures on Chinese American authors who selectively concealed, revealed, and reconstructed issues of citizenship, belonging, and inclusion in their writing.
by "Nielsen BookData"