Research Catalog

Title

The loneliest Americans / Jay Caspian Kang.

Author

Kang, Jay Caspian, 1979-

Publication

New York : Crown, [2021]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

259 pages; 22 cm

Summary

"A riveting blend of family history and original reportage by a conversation-starting writer for The New York Times Magazine that explores--and reimagines--Asian American identity in a Black and white world. In 1965, a new immigration law lifted a century of restrictions against Asian immigrants to the United States. Nobody, including the lawmakers who passed the bill, expected it to transform the country's demographics. But over the next four decades, millions arrived, including Jay Caspian Kang's parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They came with almost no understanding of their new home, much less the history of "Asian America" that was supposed to define them. The Loneliest Americans is the unforgettable story of Kang and his family as they move from a housing project in Cambridge to an idyllic college town in the South and eventually to the West Coast. Their story unfolds against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding Asian America, as millions more immigrants, many of them working-class or undocumented, stream into the country. At the same time, upwardly mobile urban professionals have struggled to reconcile their parents' assimilationist goals with membership in a multicultural elite--all while trying to carve out a new kind of belonging for their own children, who are neither white nor truly "people of color." Kang recognizes this existential loneliness in himself and in other Asian Americans who try to locate themselves in the country's racial binary. There are the businessmen turning Flushing into a center of immigrant wealth; the casualties of the Los Angeles riots; the impoverished parents in New York City who believe that admission to the city's exam schools is the only way out; the men's right's activists on Reddit ranting about intermarriage; and the handful of protesters who show up at Black Lives Matter rallies holding "Yellow Peril Supports Black Power" signs. Kang's exquisitely crafted book brings these lonely parallel climbers together amid a wave of anti-Asian violence. In response, he calls for a new form of immigrant solidarity--one rooted not in bubble tea and elite college admissions but in the struggles of refugees and the working class"--

Subject

• Kang, Jay Caspian, 1979- > Family
• Kang family
• Korean Americans > Cultural assimilation
• Asian Americans > Ethnic identity
• Korean Americans > Biography
• BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Cultural, Ethnic & Regional / Asian & Asian American
• SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / American / Asian American Studies
• Emigration and immigration > Social aspects
• Families
• Korean Americans
• United States > Emigration and immigration > Social aspects
• United States

Genre/Form

• Autobiographies.
• Biographies.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-249) and index.

Contents

How we got here -- The making of Asian America -- How the Asians became white -- Koreatown -- Flushing rising -- What are we talking about? -- The rage of the MRAZNs -- Bruce and me.

Call Number

JFD 22-876

ISBN

• 9780525576228
• 0525576223

LCCN

2021029983

OCLC

1252763566

Author

Kang, Jay Caspian, 1979- author.

Title

The loneliest Americans / Jay Caspian Kang.

Publisher

New York : Crown, [2021]

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-249) and index.

Local Note

FAMILY HISTORY OF KOREAN AMERICAN FAMILY.

Other Form:

Online version: Kang, Jay Caspian. Loneliest Americans First edition. New York : Crown, 2021 9780525576242 (DLC) 2021029984

Research Call Number

JFD 22-876