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Book Coming Full Circle

    Book Details:
  • Author : Leny Mendoza Strobel
  • Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
  • Release : 2016-01-23
  • ISBN : 9781522842378
  • Pages : 276 pages

Download or read book Coming Full Circle written by Leny Mendoza Strobel and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-01-23 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this second edition of Coming Full Circle: The Process of Decolonization Among Post-1965 Filipino Americans, Professor EJR David writes a new FOREWORD and the author has a NEW INTRODUCTION. Coming Full Circle is about the healing of the Filipino colonized psyche through the recovery and re-imagination of Filipino identity and culture. It is about the emergence from the 'culture of silence' to critical consciousness that is able to develop new conceptualizations and frameworks about the Filipino American experience. Decolonization is a psychological process that enables the colonized to understand and overcome the depths of alienation and marginalization caused by the psychic and epistemic violence of colonization. Decolonization transforms the consciousness of the colonized through the reclamation of the Filipino cultural self and makes space for the recovery and healing of traumatic memory, and healing leading to different forms of activism. It is an open-ended process. It is a new way of seeing. As a way of healing, it is also a promise and a hope.

Book Filipino American Psychology

Download or read book Filipino American Psychology written by Kevin L. Nadal Ph. D. and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2010 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filipino Americans are projected to become the largest Asian American population by 2010. As the second largest immigrant group in the country, there are approximately 3 million documented and undocumented Filipino Americans in the US. Filipino Americans are unique in many ways. They are descendants of the Philippines, a country that was colonized by Spain for over three centuries and by the US for almost 50 years. They are the only ethnic group that has been categorized as Asian American, Pacific Islander, Hispanic, and even as their own separate ethnicity. Because of diverse phenotypes, they are often perceived as being Asian, Latino, multiracial, and others. And contrary to the Model Minority Myth, Filipino Americans have experienced several health, psychological, and educational disparities, including lower college graduation rates and higher levels of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, depression, and suicide. Despite these disparaging statistics, Filipino Americans have made significant contributions to the US, ever since their first arrivals in October 1587- from their involvement in the United Farmworkers Movement to their roles in hip-hop culture and their presence in medicine, education, and the arts. However, Filipino Americans have also been referred to as the "Forgotten Asian Americans" because of their invisibility in mainstream media, academia, and politics. Filipino American Psychology: A Collection of Personal Narratives offers an intimate look at the lives of Filipino Americans through stories involving ethnic identity, colonial mentality, cultural conflicts, and experiences with gender, sexual orientation, and multiraciality. Writers courageously address how they cope with mental health issues- including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and suicide. Theories and concepts from the book's predecessor, Filipino American Psychology: A Handbook of Theory, Research, and Clinical Practice can be applied through the voices of a diverse collection of Filipino Americans.

Book Brown Skin  White Minds

Download or read book Brown Skin White Minds written by E. J. R. David and published by IAP. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filipino Americans have a long and rich history with and within the United States, and they are currently the second largest Asian group in the country. However, very little is known about how their historical and contemporary relationship with America may shape their psychological experiences. The most insidious psychological consequence of their historical and contemporary experiences is colonial mentality or internalized oppression. Some common manifestations of this phenomenon are described below: • Skin-whitening products are used often by Filipinos in the Philippines to make their skins lighter. Skin whitening clinics and businesses are popular in the Philippines as well. The "beautiful" people such as actors and other celebrities endorse these skin-whitening procedures. Children are told to stay away from the sun so they do not get "too dark." Many Filipinos also regard anything "imported" to be more special than anything "local" or made in the Philippines. • In the United States, many Filipino Americans make fun of "fresh-off-the-boats" (FOBs) or those who speak English with Filipino accents. Many Filipino Americans try to dilute their "Filipino-ness" by saying that they are mixed with some other races. Also, many Filipino Americans regard Filipinos in the Philippines, and pretty much everything about the Philippines, to be of "lower class" and those of the "third world." The historical and contemporary reasons for why Filipino -/ Americans display these attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors - often referred to as colonial mentality - are explored in Brown Skin, White Minds. This book is a peer-reviewed publication that integrates knowledge from multiple scholarly and scientific disciplines to identify the past and current catalysts for such self-denigrating attitudes and behaviors. It takes the reader from indigenous Tao culture, Spanish and American colonialism, colonial mentality or internalized oppression along with its implications on Kapwa, identity, and mental health, to decolonization in the clinical, community, and research settings. This book is intended for the entire community - teachers, researchers, students, and service providers interested in or who are working with Filipinos and Filipino Americans, or those who are interested in the psychological consequences of colonialism and oppression. This book may serve as a tool for remembering the past and as a tool for awakening to address the present.

Book Filipino Americans

    Book Details:
  • Author : Maria P. P. Root
  • Publisher : SAGE Publications
  • Release : 1997-05-20
  • ISBN : 1506319890
  • Pages : 371 pages

Download or read book Filipino Americans written by Maria P. P. Root and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 1997-05-20 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Maria P. P. Root′s new edited volume on Filipino American makes an outstanding contribution in terms of exploring the socio-economic integration and the transformation of ethnic identities among one of the largest, fastest growing, but least studied Asian American groups in the United States - Filipinos. . . . One unique area covered by this book is its thoughtful reflection on the impacts of colonization on Filipino literature and the articulation of Filipino identities . . . . The book provides an unusual breadth of information on Filipino lives in the U.S.A. . . . I found this book very valuable as an introductory text in an undergraduate curriculum on Asian American studies, and in racial and ethnic studies. The power of the book lies in its ability to render problematic the stereotypes of Asian Americans, and to question the preconceived categories of race, culture, and ethnicity. The book′s discussion and reflection on identities is provocative and accessible to students." --Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies "Maria P. P. Root succeeds where many ethnic-specific anthologies fail: focusing on the issue of a people′s identity while avoiding boxing them in. . . . What is refreshing about this volume is not only the variety of perspectives, but the different styles. . . . Root and the contributors succeed in living up to the hope stated in the book′s introduction, ′′that these pages will offer challenging questions, some refreshing analysis, and new paradigms for interpreting the Filipino American experience.′′ --Pacific Reader Typically, when Asian Americans are discussed in the media, the reference is to people of Chinese or Japanese descent. However, the largest Asian American ethnic group is Filipino-a group about which little is known or written, even though Filipinos have a long-standing history with the United States through colonization that effects how this group is viewed and views themselves. Aimed at rectifying this information dearth, this volume presents the first interdisciplinary analysis of who Filipinos are and what it means to be a Filipino American. With contributions from historians, social workers, community leaders, ethnic studies scholars, sociologists, educators, health care workers, political scientists, and psychologists, this book addresses such issues as ethnic identity, the impact of different colonizations on ethnic identity, personal and family relationships, mental health, race, and racism. In addition, the sociopolitical context is examined in each social-issues chapter to make the volume more useful as a foundational tool for hypothesis generation, empirical research, policy analysis and planning, and literature review. This book offers readers a rich and varied portrait of our largest Asian American ethnic group.

Book Filipino American Psychology

Download or read book Filipino American Psychology written by Kevin L. Nadal and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DISCOVER THE FOUNDATIONS AND NUANCES OF TREATING THE MENTAL HEALTH OF FILIPINO AMERICANS Filipino American Psychology: A Handbook of Theory, Research, and Clinical Practice, 2nd Edition compiles the latest and best information about the psychology of Filipino Americans into a single, indispensable volume. Distinguished and celebrated professor and author, Dr. Kevin Nadal, explains in thorough detail the mental health issues facing many Filipino Americans today. It also covers effective techniques and strategies for working with the Filipino American population today. Filipino American Psychology uses reader-friendly language, along with numerous vignettes and case studies, to make accessible its in-depth treatment of the subject. The book covers a wide range of topics necessary to understand how to provide mental health treatment to Filipino Americans, including: Filipino and Filipino American Cultural Values Overcoming the Model Minority: Contemporary experiences of Filipino Americans Intersections of Gender and Sexual Orientation Multiracial and Multiethnic Filipino Americans Mental Health and Psychotherapy in the Filipino American community The book also includes a brand-new section on the historical traumas that still reverberate through the Filipino American community. Perfect for mental health practitioners and students who are likely to encounter this large cultural and ethnic group, Filipino American Psychology serves as a foundational volume in any complete mental health library.

Book Decolonizing Wealth

Download or read book Decolonizing Wealth written by Edgar Villanueva and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decolonizing Wealth is a provocative analysis of the dysfunctional colonial dynamics at play in philanthropy and finance. Award-winning philanthropy executive Edgar Villanueva draws from the traditions from the Native way to prescribe the medicine for restoring balance and healing our divides. Though it seems counterintuitive, the philanthropic industry has evolved to mirror colonial structures and reproduces hierarchy, ultimately doing more harm than good. After 14 years in philanthropy, Edgar Villanueva has seen past the field's glamorous, altruistic façade, and into its shadows: the old boy networks, the savior complexes, and the internalized oppression among the “house slaves,” and those select few people of color who gain access. All these funders reflect and perpetuate the same underlying dynamics that divide Us from Them and the haves from have-nots. In equal measure, he denounces the reproduction of systems of oppression while also advocating for an orientation towards justice to open the floodgates for a rising tide that lifts all boats. In the third and final section, Villanueva offers radical provocations to funders and outlines his Seven Steps for Healing. With great compassion—because the Native way is to bring the oppressor into the circle of healing—Villanueva is able to both diagnose the fatal flaws in philanthropy and provide thoughtful solutions to these systemic imbalances. Decolonizing Wealth is a timely and critical book that preaches for mutually assured liberation in which we are all inter-connected.

Book Militarized Currents

    Book Details:
  • Author : Setsu Shigematsu
  • Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
  • Release : 2010
  • ISBN : 1452915180
  • Pages : 405 pages

Download or read book Militarized Currents written by Setsu Shigematsu and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foregrounding indigenous and feminist scholarship, this collection analyzes militarization as an extension of colonialism from the late twentieth to the twenty-first century in Asia and the Pacific. The contributors theorize the effects of militarization across former and current territories of Japan and the United States, such as Guam, Okinawa, the Marshall Islands, the Philippines, and Korea, demonstrating that the relationship between militarization and colonial subordination—and their gendered and racialized processes—shapes and produces bodies of memory, knowledge, and resistance. Contributors: Walden Bello, U of the Philippines; Michael Lujan Bevacqua, U of Guam; Patti Duncan, Oregon State U; Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, U of Hawai‘i, M noa; Insook Kwon, Myongji U; Laurel A. Monnig, U of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign; Katharine H. S. Moon, Wellesley College; Jon Kamakawiwo‘ole Osorio, U of Hawai‘i, M noa; Naoki Sakai, Cornell U; Fumika Sato, Hitotsubashi U; Theresa Cenidoza Suarez, California State U, San Marcos; Teresia K. Teaiwa, Victoria U, Wellington; Wesley Iwao Ueunten, San Francisco State U.

Book Not  A Nation of Immigrants

Download or read book Not A Nation of Immigrants written by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debunks the pervasive and self-congratulatory myth that our country is proudly founded by and for immigrants, and urges readers to embrace a more complex and honest history of the United States Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US’s history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today. She explains that the idea that we are living in a land of opportunity—founded and built by immigrants—was a convenient response by the ruling class and its brain trust to the 1960s demands for decolonialization, justice, reparations, and social equality. Moreover, Dunbar-Ortiz charges that this feel good—but inaccurate—story promotes a benign narrative of progress, obscuring that the country was founded in violence as a settler state, and imperialist since its inception. While some of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, others are descendants of white settlers who arrived as colonizers to displace those who were here since time immemorial, and still others are descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will. This paradigm shifting new book from the highly acclaimed author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States charges that we need to stop believing and perpetuating this simplistic and a historical idea and embrace the real (and often horrific) history of the United States.

Book Racial Formation in the Twenty First Century

Download or read book Racial Formation in the Twenty First Century written by Daniel HoSang and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This collection of essays marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s Racial Formation in the United States demonstrates the importance and influence of the concept of racial formation. The range of disciplines, discourses, ideas, and ideologies makes for fascinating reading, demonstrating the utility and applicability of racial formation theory to diverse contexts, while at the same time presenting persuasively original extensions and elaborations of it. This is an important book, one that sums up, analyzes, and builds on some of the most important work in racial studies during the past three decades."—George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place “Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century is truly a state-of-the-field anthology, fully worthy of the classic volume it honors—timely, committed, sophisticated, accessible, engaging. The collection will be a boon to anyone wishing to understand the workings of race in the contemporary United States.” —Matthew Frye Jacobson, Professor of American Studies, Yale University “This stimulating and lively collection demonstrates the wide-ranging influence and generative power of Omi and Winant’s racial formation framework. The contributors are leading scholars in fields ranging from the humanities and social sciences to legal and policy studies. They extend the framework into new terrain, including non-U.S. settings, gender and sexual relations, and the contemporary warfare state. While acknowledging the pathbreaking nature of Omi and Winant’s intervention, the contributors do not hesitate to critique what they see as limitations and omissions. This is a must-read for anyone striving to make sense of tensions and contradictions in racial politics in the U.S. and transnationally.”—Evelyn Nakano Glenn, editor of Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters

Book Immigrant Acts

Download or read book Immigrant Acts written by Lisa Lowe and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Immigrant Acts, Lisa Lowe argues that understanding Asian immigration to the United States is fundamental to understanding the racialized economic and political foundations of the nation. Lowe discusses the contradictions whereby Asians have been included in the workplaces and markets of the U.S. nation-state, yet, through exclusion laws and bars from citizenship, have been distanced from the terrain of national culture. Lowe argues that a national memory haunts the conception of Asian American, persisting beyond the repeal of individual laws and sustained by U.S. wars in Asia, in which the Asian is seen as the perpetual immigrant, as the "foreigner-within." In Immigrant Acts, she argues that rather than attesting to the absorption of cultural difference into the universality of the national political sphere, the Asian immigrant--at odds with the cultural, racial, and linguistic forms of the nation--displaces the temporality of assimilation. Distance from the American national culture constitutes Asian American culture as an alternative site that produces cultural forms materially and aesthetically in contradiction with the institutions of citizenship and national identity. Rather than a sign of a "failed" integration of Asians into the American cultural sphere, this critique preserves and opens up different possibilities for political practice and coalition across racial and national borders. In this uniquely interdisciplinary study, Lowe examines the historical, political, cultural, and aesthetic meanings of immigration in relation to Asian Americans. Extending the range of Asian American critique, Immigrant Acts will interest readers concerned with race and ethnicity in the United States, American cultures, immigration, and transnationalism.

Book Legions of Boom

    Book Details:
  • Author : Oliver Wang
  • Publisher : Duke University Press
  • Release : 2015-05-17
  • ISBN : 0822375486
  • Pages : 358 pages

Download or read book Legions of Boom written by Oliver Wang and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-17 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armed with speakers, turntables, light systems, and records, Filipino American mobile DJ crews, such as Ultimate Creations, Spintronix, and Images, Inc., rocked dance floors throughout the San Francisco Bay Area from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s. In Legions of Boom noted music and pop culture writer and scholar Oliver Wang chronicles this remarkable scene that eventually became the cradle for turntablism. These crews, which were instrumental in helping to create and unify the Bay Area's Filipino American community, gave young men opportunities to assert their masculinity and gain social status. While crews regularly spun records for school dances, weddings, birthdays, or garage parties, the scene's centerpieces were showcases—or multi-crew performances—which drew crowds of hundreds, or even thousands. By the mid-1990s the scene was in decline, as single DJs became popular, recruitment to crews fell off, and aspiring scratch DJs branched off into their own scene. As the training ground for a generation of DJs, including DJ Q-Bert, Shortkut, and Mix Master Mike, the mobile scene left an indelible mark on its community that eventually grew to have a global impact.

Book Postcolonial Literature and the United States  Race  Ethnicity  and Literature

Download or read book Postcolonial Literature and the United States Race Ethnicity and Literature written by and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Probing essays that examine critical issues surrounding the United States's ever-expanding international cultural identity in the postcolonial era Download Plain Text version At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we may be in a "transnational" moment, increasingly aware of the ways in which local and national narratives, in literature and elsewhere, cannot be conceived apart from a radically new sense of shared human histories and global interdependence. To think transnationally about literature, history, and culture requires a study of the evolution of hybrid identities within nation-states and diasporic identities across national boundaries. Studies addressing issues of race, ethnicity, and empire in U.S. culture have provided some of the most innova-tive and controversial contributions to recent scholarship. Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature represents a new chapter in the emerging dialogues about the importance of borders on a global scale. This book collects nineteen essays written in the 1990s in this emergent field by both well established and up-and-coming scholars. Almost all the essays have been either especially written for this volume or revised for inclusion here. These essays are accessible, well-focused resources for college and university students and their teachers, displaying both historical depth and theoretical finesse as they attempt close and lively readings. The anthology includes more than one discussion of each literary tradition associated with major racial or ethnic communities. Such a gathering of diverse, complementary, and often competing viewpoints provides a good introduction to the cultural differences and commonalities that comprise the United States today. The volume opens with two essays by the editors: first, a survey of the ideas in the individual pieces, and, second, a long essay that places current debates in U.S. ethnicity and race studies within both the history of American studies as a whole and recent developments in postcolonial theory. Amritjit Singh, a professor of English and African American studies at Rhode Island College, is coeditor of Conversations with Ralph Ellison and Conversations with Ishmael Reed (both from University Press of Mississippi). Peter Schmidt, a professor of English at Swarthmore College, is the author of The Heart of the Story: Eudora Welty's Short Fiction (University Press of Mississippi).

Book Asian American Identities and Practices

Download or read book Asian American Identities and Practices written by Jonathan H. X. Lee and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-05-23 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asian American Identities and Practices: Folkloric Expressions in Everyday Life probes the intersection, interplay, and interconnection of Asian and Asian American folklore and folklife in globally fluid and culturally creative landscapes among Asian American communities and subjects. Asian American folklore, as a way of life and practice, has emerged and continues to emerge as Asian Americans lay claim and take root in the American mosaic. As such, the contributors in this volume all show how the Asian American historical experiences and continued international migration inform the production of new folkloric practices, subjectivities, and ideologies, which in turn strengthen specific Asian American ways of life while normalizing folklore that are squarely produced in Asian America. This collectionillustrates that Asian American folklore and folklife is interwoven with social relationships, the creation of various types of ethnic, cultural, and national identities, and adaptive strategies within the particular historical periods, communities, and shifting boundaries and demographics of Asian America. The global context of Asian American folklore and folklife, especially in the racially charged post-9/11 context, bespeaks how Asians, past and present, maneuver the cultural spaces of their host society and old traditions to create new sites and new opportunities for cultural folkloric production and expression in everyday life.

Book Transnational Crossroads

Download or read book Transnational Crossroads written by Camilla Fojas and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2012-06-01 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twentieth century was a time of unprecedented migration and interaction for Asian, Latin American, and Pacific Islander cultures in the Americas and the American Pacific. Some of these ethnic groups already had historic ties, but technology, migration, and globalization during the twentieth century brought them into even closer contact. Transnational Crossroads explores and triangulates for the first time the interactions and contacts among these three cultural groups that were brought together by the expanding American empire from 1867 to 1950. Through a comparative framework, this volume weaves together narratives of U.S. and Spanish empire, globalization, resistance, and identity, as well as social, labor, and political movements. Contributors examine multiethnic celebrities and key figures, migratory paths, cultural productions, and social and political formations among these three groups. Engaging multiple disciplines and methodologies, these studies of Asian American, Latin American, and Pacific Islander cultural interactions explode traditional notions of ethnic studies and introduce new approaches to transnational and comparative studies of the Americas and the American Pacific.

Book Post Colonial National Identity in the Philippines

Download or read book Post Colonial National Identity in the Philippines written by Greg Bankoff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2002.Presenting a fresh understanding of the construction of Post-Colonial national identity in the new context of globalization, this text looks at the dilemmas of the requirement to compete in the global economy and the political demands of human rights and cultural differences. The authors are concerned with the ways in which a modern state attempts to mould the identities of its citizens and the ways in which the myriad of identities in a multiethnic, multicultural and multi-religious population give rise to intense contradictions. This important research will have implications beyond the Filipino case and will be of great interest to a wider audience as a reference for courses on Asian studies, political science and history.

Book Transpacific Femininities

    Book Details:
  • Author : Denise Cruz
  • Publisher : Duke University Press
  • Release : 2012-11-19
  • ISBN : 0822353164
  • Pages : 310 pages

Download or read book Transpacific Femininities written by Denise Cruz and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-19 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVFocusing on the early to mid-twentieth century, Denise Cruz illuminates the role that a growing English-language Philippine print culture played in the emergence of new classes of transpacific women./div

Book Postcolonial Theory and the United States

Download or read book Postcolonial Theory and the United States written by Amritjit Singh and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2009-11-12 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we may be in a “transnational” moment, increasingly aware of the ways in which local and national narratives, in literature and elsewhere, cannot be conceived apart from a radically new sense of shared human histories and global interdependence. To think transnationally about literature, history, and culture requires a study of the evolution of hybrid identities within nation-states and diasporic identities across national boundaries. Studies addressing issues of race, ethnicity, and empire in US culture have provided some of the most innovative and controversial contributions to recent scholarship. Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature represents a new chapter in the emerging dialogues about the importance of borders on a global scale. This book collects nineteen essays written in the 1990s in this emergent field by both well established and up-and-coming scholars. Almost all the essays have been either especially written for this volume or revised for inclusion here. These essays are accessible, well-focused resources for college and university students and their teachers, displaying both historical depth and theoretical finesse as they attempt close and lively readings. The anthology includes more than one discussion of each literary tradition associated with major racial or ethnic communities. Such a gathering of diverse, complementary, and often competing viewpoints provides a good introduction to the cultural differences and commonalities that comprise the United States today. The volume opens with two essays by the editors: first, a survey of the ideas in the individual pieces, and, second, a long essay that places current debates in US ethnicity and race studies within both the history of American studies as a whole and recent developments in postcolonial theory.