Reckoning with Asian America.

Asian women, the immigrant generation, entered Hawai’i, when it was a kingdom and subsequently a US territory, and the Western US continent, from the 1840s to the 1930s as part of a global movement of people escaping imperial wars, colonialism, and homeland disorder. Most were wives or picture brides from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and South Asia, joining menfolk who worked overseas to escape poverty and strife. Women also arrived independently; some on the East Coast. US immigration laws restricting the entry of Asian male laborers also limited Asian women. Asian women were critical for establishing Asian American families and ensuring such households’ survival and social mobility. They worked on plantations, in agricultural fields and canneries, as domestics and seamstresses, and helped operate family businesses, while doing housework, raising children, and navigating cultural differences. Their activities gave women more power in their families than by tradition and shifted gender roles toward more egalitarian households. Women’s organizations, and women’s leadership, ideas, and skills contributed to ethnic community formation. Second generation (US-born) Asian American women grew up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and negotiated generational as well as cultural differences. Some were mixed race, namely, biracial or multiracial. Denied participation in many aspects of American youth culture, they formed ethnic-based clubs and organizations and held social activities that mirrored mainstream society. Some attended college. A few broke new ground professionally. Asian and Asian American women were diverse in national origin, class, and location. Both generations faced race and gender boundaries in education, employment, and public spaces, and they were active in civic affairs to improve their lives and their communities’ well-being. Across America, they marched, made speeches, and raised funds to free their homelands from foreign occupation and fought for racial and gender equality in the courts, workplaces, and elsewhere.

Current Gaps in Breast Cancer Screening Among Asian and Asian American Women in the United States.

East Meets Black: Asian and Black Masculinities in the Post–Civil Rights EraRacial Reconstruction: Black Inclusion, Chinese Exclusion, and the Fictions of Citizenship

Fetishising Flesh

Attractiveness and beauty have been found to be the most important factors in prompting relationships and interactions, and for making social judgments. Standards of beauty in America, however, are primarily based on Caucasian-European-American ideals. Society is deluged with this beauty ideal constantly through media. People furthest from this ideal, specifically women of color, may suffer the psychological effects of low self-esteem, poor body image, and eating disorders. Research on body image and eating disorders has been exclusively conducted on white women; little research or conceptual work has included women of color. This paper sets a beginning foundation for understanding body image and eating disorders in Asian and Asian American women. In addition, the social-political image of Asian and Asian American women is addressed. Asian and Asian American women are victims of the “double jeopardy” of racism and sexism.

This chapter reflects on the author’s identity formation growing up in the slums of Chicago in a patriarchal Chinese family, moving to a “white” neighborhood and encountering racism for the first time, and embarking on the fraught academic journey toward the complicated guild of biblical studies. It discusses the various influences in her development, first, as a feminist, and then as an Asian American feminist, circling back to her roots in poverty to devote her current energies to examine and critique the inequalities and injustice that are endemic to our global capitalist society. She will examine her debt to Asian American feminist scholarship on race that helps her recognize the particular forms of racism, under which Asian Americans suffer, and her bonding with different communities of Asian and Asian American women (and men), such as Pacific, Asian, North American Asian Women in Theology and Ministry and the Ethnic Chinese Biblical Colloquium.

This article examines dominant narratives of anti-Asian violence to critique how the Asian American documentation of harm shapes and limits Asian American politicization. By analyzing two objects, the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium’s reports on anti-Asian violence (1993–2002) and the documentary Rising Against Asian Hate (2022), this article discusses how anti-Asian violence has been articulated and rearticulated during different moments of crisis. While seeming to reinforce the dominant understanding of anti-Asian violence as a scene of individual, spectacular, and repetitive injury, these two objects can also be read against the grain to offer a more expansive account of anti-Asian violence.

We conducted a population-based case-control study of breast cancer among Chinese-, Japanese- and Filipino-American women in Los Angeles County Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), San Francisco-Oakland MSA and Oahu, Hawaii. One objective of the study was to quantify breast cancer risks in relation to menstrual and reproductive histories in migrant and US-born Asian-Americans and to establish whether the gradient of risk in Asian-Americans can be explained by these factors. Using a common study design and questionnaire in the three study areas, we successfully conducted in-person interviews with 597 Asian-American women diagnosed with incident, primary breast cancer during the period 1983-87 (70% of those eligible) and 966 population-based controls (75% of those eligible). Controls were matched to cases on age, ethnicity and area of residence. In the present analysis, which included 492 cases and 768 controls, we observed a statistically non-significant 4% reduction in risk of breast cancer with each year delay in onset of menstruation. Independent of age at menarche risk of breast cancer was lower (odds ratio; OR=0.77) among women with menstrual cycles greater than 29 days. Parous Asian-American women showed a significantly lower risk of breast cancer then nulliparous women (OR=0.54). An increasing number of livebirths and a decreasing age at first livebirth were both associated with a lower risk of breast cancer, although the effect of number of livebirths was no longer significant after adjustment for age at first livebirth. Women with a pregnancy (spontaneous or induced abortions) but no livebirth had a statistically non-significant increased risk (OR=1.84), but there was no evidence that one type of abortion was particularly harmful. A positive history of breastfeeding was associated with non-significantly lower risk of breast cancer (OR=.78). There are several notable differences in the menstrual and reproductive factors between Asian-Americans in this study and published data on US whites. US-born Asian Americans had an average age at menarche of 12.12 years-no older than has been found in comparable studies of US whites, but 1.4 years earlier than Asian women who migrated to the US. Asian-American women, particularly those born in the US and those who migrated before age 36, also had a later age at first birth and fewer livebirths than US whites. A slightly higher proportion of Asian-American women breastfed, compared with US whites. The duration of breastfeeding was similar in US-born Asians and US whites, but was longer in Asian migrants, especially those who migrated at a later age. Menstrual and reproductive factors in Asian-American women are consistent with their breast cancer rates being at least as high as in US whites, and they are. However, the effects of these menstrual and reproductive factors were small and the ORs for migration variables changed only slightly after adjustment for these menstrual and reproductive factors. These results suggest that the lower rates of breast cancer in Asians must be largely as a result of other environmental/lifestyle factors.

This article focuses on the role of modern-day culture centers in higher education. An interview of 26 staff members from campuses across the country found that culture centers took on a significant role in coalition building between Asian American and Black communities during the COVID-19 pandemic and the current time of racial reckoning. The leadership role of these centers during this time highlights expansion of their original basic mission. Beyond serving as “home away from home” and retention spaces for historically excluded communities, the centers became educational spaces that promote cross racial understanding and affirm multiracial identity. This article reveals the racial narrative about Asian Americans, including the dangers of the model minority myth. The article further provides key historical references to Black and Asian American coalition building in the 20th century, which influenced how culture centers evolved in increasing cross racial understanding on their campuses. With expertise in diversity, inclusion, and equity, the current centers’ staff members have the opportunity to serve as thought leaders for their campuses and enhance their role and the centers’ role in campus administrative policy development for racial and social justice.

Binge drinking (five drinks or more in a 2-h sitting for men or four or more drinks in a 2-h sitting for women) and alcohol-related problems are a growing problem among Asian American young adults. The current study examines the sociocultural (i.e., generational status and ethnic identity) determinants of binge drinking and alcohol-related problems across U.S.-born, young-adult, Asian American ethnic groups. Data were collected from 1,575 Asian American undergraduates from a public university in Southern California. Chinese Americans consisted of the largest Asian ethnicity in the study, followed by Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean, South Asian, Japanese, Multi-Asian, and "other Asian American." Participants completed a web-based assessment of binge drinking, alcohol-related problems, ethnic identity, descriptive norms (i.e., perceived peer drinking norms), and demographic information. An analysis of variance was used to determine potential gender and ethnic differences in binge drinking and alcohol-related problems. Negative binomial regression was selected to examine the relationship between the predictors and outcomes in our model. There were no gender differences between Asian American men and women in regards to binge drinking; however, men reported more alcohol-related problems. Japanese Americans reported the highest number of binge-drinking episodes and alcohol-related problems, followed by Filipino and Multi-Asian Americans (e.g., Chinese and Korean). Living off-campus; higher scores in descriptive norms; Greek status; and belonging to the ethnic groups Japanese, Filipino, Multi-Asian, Korean, and South Asian increased the risk of engaging in binge drinking. Quantity of alcohol consumed, Greek status, gender, Filipino, South Asian, other Asian, and lower ethnic identity scores were related to alcohol-related problems. Using one of the largest samples collected to date on sociocultural determinants and drinking among U.S.-born Asian American young adults, the findings highlight the significant variability in drinking patterns among Asian American ethnic groups.

This study explored whether affectively oriented forms of communication are accorded the same significance in the friendships of Asian and African Americans as they are in the friendships of European Americans. Participants (72 Asian American men and women; 50 African American men and women; and 55 European American men and women) indicated the importance of affectively versus instrumentally oriented communication skills using a revised version of the authors’ Communication Functions Questionnaire. Results indicated a complex pattern of differences due to ethnicity, sex, and type of communication skill. In particular, European American women viewed the affectively oriented skills of their same-sex friends as more important than did African American women. These and related findings are discussed in terms of the role communication plays in friendships, and how this role is moderated by ethnicity and sex.

Four studies investigate whether gay Asian Americans are stereotyped as more American than Asian Americans who are presumed straight. Gay Asian American men (Study 1) and women (Study 2) were rated as more American than their counterparts whose sexual orientation was unspecified. However, sexual orientation did not influence judgments of Whites’ American identity. The relationship between Asian Americans’ sexual orientation and perceptions of their American identity was mediated by a belief that American culture is relatively more accepting of gay people than Asian culture (Studies 3 and 4). Manipulating how accepting of gay people a target’s country of origin is relative to the United States altered ratings of American identity for gay but not straight targets (Study 4). Using an intersectional approach, these studies demonstrate that sexual orientation information comes together with race to influence who is likely to be perceived as American.

Over the course of 2020 and 2021, several Asian-owned businesses were vandalized and individuals of Asian descent were attacked in Tacoma, Washington, part of the alarming increase in anti-Asian violence in the past several years. The incidents occurred in parts of the settler colonial city, which sits on the ancestral territory of the Puyallup nation, that are embedded with histories of privilege, dispossession, and anti-Asian violence. Many of the targeted businesses are just blocks away from where riotous White mobs with torches drove away Chinese residents in 1885, an episode known as the ‘Tacoma Method.' These very same streets were later locations on which Japanese immigrants had businesses and homes prior to being driven out and incarcerated during WWII. This paper excavates the reappearance of racialized violence in the same city spaces through the work of Allan Pred as well as scholars who consider the complexity of belonging in the settler colonial city. This excavation aims to make visible that which is unsaid and silenced in our urban landscapes so that we may counter the reproduction of expulsion/alien status and material violence in the settler colonial city.

Tables and Figures Preface 1. Ethnicity and Panethnicity 2. Coming Together: The Asian American Movement 3. Electoral Politics 4. The Politics of Social Service Funding 5. Census Classification: The Politics of Ethnic Enumeration 6. Reactive Solidarity: Anti-Asian Violence 7. Pan-Asian American Ethnicity: Retrospect and Prospect Notes References Interviews Index

Childhood maltreatment is a key social determinant that potentially results in long-lasting psychological consequences in adulthood. This study examined the link between childhood maltreatment (i.e., physical abuse, sexual abuse, and exposure to violence) and psychological distress (i.e., depression and anxiety) among Asian-American women. The moderating effect of perceived discrimination on the association was also investigated. This study utilized self-reported data from 1022 Asian-American women aged 18–65 (Mage = 38.51) who participated in the National Latino and Asian American Survey. A series of multivariate logistic regressions were conducted to detect the association between childhood maltreatment, sociodemographics and acculturation, and psychological distress for Asian-American women. Results indicated that Asian women who experienced sexual abuse and were exposed to violence during childhood had a significantly greater likelihood of both depressive and anxiety disorders, while childhood physical abuse was significantly associated with a depressive disorder, but not an anxiety disorder (Model 1). In Model 2, marital status and perceived discrimination were significant determinants of psychological distress. Respondents who were never married had a greater likelihood of depression compared to those who were married or cohabited. Also, women who perceived discrimination were more likely to have both depressive and anxiety disorders. In Model 3, perceived discrimination was a significant moderator on the association between exposure to violence and an anxiety disorder. From a clinical perspective, identifying the effects of social determinants on mental health disorders and providing proper services and intervention can be key to improving an individual’s well-being and social stability.