1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910778988203321

Autore

Chang Robert S

Titolo

Disoriented [[electronic resource] ] : Asian Americans, law, and the nation-state / / Robert S. Chang

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, : New York University Press, c1999

ISBN

0-8147-7239-0

0-585-33904-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (191 p.)

Collana

Critical America

Disciplina

342.73/0873

Soggetti

Asian Americans - Legal status, laws, etc

Race discrimination - Law and legislation - United States

Asian Americans - Social conditions

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 139-171) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Dreaming in black and white: racial-sexual policing in the Birth of a Nation, The Cheat, and Who Killed Vincent Chin? -- Centering the immigrant in the international imagination -- Why we need a critical Asian American legal studies -- Narrative space -- Narrative account of Asian America -- Mapping Asian American legal studies -- Reverse racism! : affirmative action, the family, and the dream that is America -- One America : an essay in three parts.

Sommario/riassunto

Does "Asian American" denote an ethnic or racial identification? Is a person of mixed ancestry, the child of Euro- and Asian American parents, Asian American? What does it mean to refer to first generation Hmong refugees and fifth generation Chinese Americans both as Asian American? In Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation State, Robert Chang examines the current discourse on race and law and the implications of postmodern theory and affirmative action-all of which have largely excluded Asian Americans-in order to develop a theory of critical Asian American legal studies. Demonstrating that the ongoing debate surrounding multiculturalism and immigration in the U.S. is really a struggle over the meaning of "America," Chang reveals how the construction of Asian American-ness has become a necessary component in stabilizing a national American identity-- a fact Chang



criticizes as harmful to Asian Americans. Defining the many "borders" that operate in positive and negative ways to construct America as we know it, Chang analyzes the position of Asian Americans within America's black/white racial paradigm, how "the family" operates as a stand-in for race and nation, and how the figure of the immigrant embodies a central contradiction in allegories of America. "Has profound political implications for race relations in the new century"-Michigan Law Review, May 2001