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Book Review
Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 19341990. By Lon Kurashige. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. xxii, 274 pp. Cloth, $45.00, ISBN 0-520-22742-5. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 0-520-22743-3.)
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Analyzing the Nisei Week Festival in Los Angeles, Lon Kurashige provides an important account of this community institution, which "reveals the false dichotomy between assimilation and ethnic retention" (p. xiii). As the title implies, his book traces not just the celebrations but also the ever-present conflicts within Little Tokyo, thus contradicting any simplistic view of the assimilation of the community. |
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Through a beautifully written narrative that integrates individual life stories with more formal documentary research, Kurashige argues that Nisei Week represented more than just a reflection of Japanese American relations with the larger dominant society. It is also a window into understanding how class and gender (but unfortunately not sexuality) evolved across the festival's history. |
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Kurashige begins by explaining the origins of Nisei Week in 1934 as an economic development strategy for the Little Tokyo ethnic enclave, a vehicle for showing the potential for integration of the Nisei (second generation) and providing a tool of community and social control. |
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