"Bob Lee makes major contributions to cultural studies and to ethnic studies with this insightful, engaging, and original examination of anti-Asian imagery in the U.S. Lee shows how different historical moments produce markedly different images and how changes in ethnic stereotypes register and reflect broader structural and cultural transformations"
George Lipsitz, author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How ... Read moreWhite People Profit from Identity Politics (Temple) "Orientals is an indispensable book about the United States. In it, 'American culture' emerges as a site in which racial meanings about Asia and Asian-Americans are made and remade in relation to specific historical crises, whether the settling of the western frontier, the consolidation of the European immigrant working class, the establishment of the nuclear family and middle class domesticity, World War II, Cold War liberalism or the global restructuring of the economy." -Lisa Lowe, author of Immigrant Acts: On Asian-American Cultural Politics "A compelling critique of race from an Asian American viewpoint... Given the increasingly non-European composition of the U. S. population, Lee's work provides an excellent prism to view the flawed North American self-image." -Booklist "...an outstanding examination of Asian American stereotypes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century popular culture." -Journal of American Ethnic History "Orientals is provocative in its argument regarding the role of anti-Asian racism in creating pan-white identities incorporating new European immigrants and in fostering the growth of caste and craft unions rather than organizations seeking to represent all workers." -The Journal of American History Show Less