| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

David Palumbo-Liu. Asian/American: Historical Crossing of a Racial Frotier. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1999. Pp. vi, 504. Cloth $65.00, paper $24.95.

In this important study, David Palumbo-Liu examines the shifting identities of "Asian" and "American" within historical contexts of multinational relations, global migrations, global economics, and mutual interpenetrations. What he finds is not a linear movement over time but a complexity of forces, at times contradictory, that project forward in a multitude of directions—at times blending and merging and at other times differentiating and separating. According to Palumbo-Liu, not only has the construct "Asian" been constantly reformulated over time, but also the idea of "American" has undergone modifications as it has been and continues to be redefined by Asia and Asian Americans. (The author does not ignore other ethnic minorities, but his focus in this study is on the interplay between Asian and American.) 1

Palumbo-Liu examines the ways in which discourses on the concept of modern America since the 1930s have been linked to America's relationship with Asia and the perceived problem of incorporating American citizens of Asian ancestries into the American fold. The author devotes considerable textual space to the thoughts of the eminent sociologist Robert E. Park of the Chicago School, who in the first half of the twentieth century grappled with the implications and possibilities of America's "racial frontier" on the Pacific coast and westward to Asia at a time when such considerations engendered considerable anxieties among other white Americans. . . .

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