Asian American Youth

Description

The Asian-origin population in the US constitutes the fastest growing racial/ethnic group. As of 2000, this group constitutes four percent of the total US population (twelve million). As a consequence, Asian American youth are quickly growing into their own subculture and carving out their own identities in American culture. Asian American Youth is the first collection to address a wide number of important topics about Asian American youth as a distinctive group apart from other groups such as Latinos and African Americans. This interdisciplinary volume covers such topics as Asian immigration, acculturation, assimilation, intermarriage, socialization, sexuality, and ethnic identification. The contributors show how Asian American youth have created an identity and space for themselves historically and in contemporary multicultural America.

Jennifer Lee is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Min Zhou is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Asian American Studies Interdepartment Degree Program and the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the award-winning author of several books, including Contemporary Asian America, Growing Up American and Chinatown.

"The Asian American population of the United States has grown exponentially over the last couple of decades. Yet the state of scholarly and popular knowledge of the Asian American experience remains scandalously superficial--with facile old cliches still dominating the cultural imaginary. Drs. Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou do us all a great service by producing an interdisciplinary and comparative volume that is not only state-of-the-art social science but will push us to re-think basic ideas about the rich variety of experience and condition of a growing sector of the American mosaic."
-Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco, Steinhardt School of Education, New York University
"This lively and multifaceted collection of essays reintroduces the sociology of youth into the field of race-and-ethnicity; it sheds light on ethnic practices and institutions that have remained invisible in the study of (adult) immigrants; informs us about how the children of East and Southeast Asian immigrants are becoming Asian Americans. "Asian American Youth is also a good read about a very active bunch of young people."
-Herbert J. Gans, Columbia University
"The editors of this collection start from the paradox of presence/absence--Asian American students are the fastest growing ethnic group across many college campuses, and yet popular characterizations of young Asian Americans are so often off the mark, rendering Asian American youth cultures invisible. This book is an answer back to the paradox--and provides readers with a fuller view of the main currents of Asian American youth issues, cultures, and dilemmas."
-Dana Y. Takagi, Co-Director, Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community, University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz