Getting to Asian American
Reviewed by Sam Cacas

Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People
By Helen Zia, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, (New York 2000), hardcover,
327 pages, $25.00.

The racial group Americans know as "Asian Americans" are the Rodney Dangerfield of America's racial minorities. They can't get any respect. In one breath they are blamed for taking jobs from "real Americans." In another, they are blamed for being too smart and too successful at the expense of other people of color. And, more recently, they are blamed for stealing America's nuclear secrets and being shady political fundraisers.

What gets lost in a lot of these anti-Asian myths are the political and economic contributions of Asian Americans since their first migration to America in the 16th century. Since the 1960s, a growing list of Asian American scholars and social activists have attempted to chronicle these contributions through narrative historical treatments, novels, memoirs, or political commentaries. Helen Zia's "Asian American Dreams" breaks new ground with a format that combines political commentary, social history with personal history.

The New Jersey native and Princeton graduate, known to many Asian Americans as the journalist who the Vincent Chin hate crime murder a national issue, poses the motivation for her new tome on page two: "A community as large, diverse, and dynamic as the Asian American and Pacific Islander peoples cannot stay on the edge of obscurity, frustrated by images that have rendered us invisible and voiceless, while other American communities watch us and wonder why we are at the center of key issues of the day."

Her writing in Asian American Dreams brings out views of Asian American history and contemporary issues that is probably not anything new to those who are actively involved in the everyday politics of America's fastest growing minority group. She remarks that the anti-Asian murder of Detroit, Michigan native Vincent Chin in 1982 and the failed prosecution of his two confessed murderers "did not devastate the Asian American community; instead, it had been transformed." In another section about the political aftermath of the Los Angeles riots in 1992, she empathizes with Korean Americans who felt left alone by other Asian American leaders after many of their stores were burned down. "For all the work on anti-Asian violence, the Asian American community didn't formulate the destruction of two thousand-plus Korean American stores as hate crimes. Instead, we let the major media define the events," she quotes Korean American leader Brenda Sunoo.

Like many of the issues tackled in Asian American Dreams, Zia skillfully relates each one to her own life experiences. Whether it was growing up in New Jersey and being forced by an African American classmate to decide whether she "is Black or white" to her anger at finding that she could not serve on the China desk of the U.S. State Department because of her ethnicity.

Just as Zia pulls no punches throughout the book on matters of race and ethnicity, she brings the same righteous courage to issues like same-sex marriage. As an open and vocal Lesbian, Zia writes that at first she feared coming out to her Asian American journalist peers during a conference speech in 1992. But in hindsight she emphasizes "I discovered a new sense of freedom with my colleagues and my work." Like the rest of the book, Zia then goes on to chronicle a watershed period in dealing with a particular issue: in this section, the Japanese American Citizens League's debate of the same-sex marriage issue.

In the introduction to Asian American Dreams, Zia observes that it is time for Asian Americans "to open up our universe" to all other Americans and telling them what it means for a people "Turning American." Through her countless combination of personal essays and broader chronicles, Zia likely encourages people of her race to do just that while at the same time motivating other Americans to make an effort to understand Asian Americans better.

Sam Cacas is finishing his first novel, Asian Like Me, an autobiographical story which deals with his life growing up with the African American culture and lifestyle of Washington, D.C. He can be reached at nobhillwriter@cs.com.

Recommended: Yes