Documents of the Asian American Experience

Gr 10 Up–Matsumoto (Sociology Lecturer, University of Vermont) arranges a compendium both chronological and thematic of her own essays and excerpts from documents that portray an array of Asian origin experiences in what is now the United States, including cultural changes across five centuries and Asian experiences in North American law, economics, and politics. Plentiful source notes allow readers to refer to the full texts of excerpted works so this could be used as an initial stop by an Advanced Placement or undergraduate researcher. Many Asian ethnicities receive focus, including those from China, the Philippines, Southeast and Southwest Asia, and Japan. Issues include immigration law, labor needs and movements, popular reception by non-Asian residents, and cultural appropriation of and then access to the arts. As with some other volumes in this series, the balance is on Matsumoto’s interpretive essays rather than the primary source material. More troubling, an abundance of these primary sources, while contemporaneous with events affecting and affected by Asian arrivals, is authored by native-born (European descended) Americans.