Erika Lee is the granddaughter of Chinese immigrants who entered the United States through both Angel Island and Ellis Island. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. She teaches history at the University of Minnesota, where she is also the Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair in Immigration History and Director of the Immigration History Research Center. She is the author of The Making of Asian America, Angel Island (with Judy Yung), and At America’s Gates.
**Winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature**
**A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2015**
**New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice**
"Sweeping . . . Lee's comprehensive history traces the experiences
of myriad Asian-American communities, from Chinese laborers in
1850s California to Hmong refugees in 1980s Minnesota. . . . The
Making of Asian America shares strong similarities with other broad
inclusive Asian-American histories, most obviously Ronald Takaki's
Strangers From a Different Shore, first published in 1989. Lee's
book doesn't radically depart from its predecessors so much as
provide a useful and important upgrade by broadening the scope and,
at times, deepening the investigations. . . . Fascinating. . . . I
suspect Erika Lee will soon join [the canon of key Asian-American
histories]."
*The New York Times Book Review*
"In this fascinating retelling of the American creation story, Lee
uses incisive scholarship, a wide historic lens and rich detail to
fill in the long missing Asian-American pieces. Starting with
ancient Greece and the Age of Exploration, from enslavement to
modern day challenges, Lee tracks the epic Asian-American journey
to North and South Americas, East Indies to West Indies, and in
doing so, she breaks new ground and inverts the master
narrative."
*Helen Zia, author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an
American People*
"The Making of Asian America is a path-breaking approach to Asian
American history. Professor Lee will challenge and surprise most of
her readers. . . . She is clearly now a distinct and important
voice in a debate of growing complexity."
*Roger Daniels, author of Coming to America and Charles Phelps Taft
Professor Emeritus of History, University of Cincinnati*
"A stunning achievement, The Making of Asian America establishes
the centrality of Asians to American history, and poses
alternatives to US national and immigration histories. Asians, this
remarkable text reveals, transformed the face of America, and they
locate the US firmly within a hemispheric and global order."
*Gary Y. Okihiro, Professor of International and Public Affairs,
Columbia University*
"Building on the best and newest scholarship, Erika Lee has written
a sweeping yet personal and critical history of Asian Americans
across centuries, continents, and diverse cultures without losing
sight of the global, racial, and historical contexts of Asian
migration, exclusion, and resettlement. A definitive and ideal text
for college classes and the general public, The Making of Asian
America is truly an enjoyable, informative, and insightful
read."
*Judy Yung, Professor Emerita of American Studies, UC Santa Cruz,
and author of Unbound Feet*
“A fascinating narrative. . . . Deftly weaving together a masterful
synthesis of the existing literature with new information culled
from hitherto untapped archival sources and with analytical
insights on the global currents that have shaped the last five
centuries, Erika Lee has created a richly textured tapestry
enlivened by vivid stories of hundreds of individuals and groups
who played significant, though often unsung, roles in the making of
Asian America.”
*Sucheng Chan, Professor Emerita of Asian American Studies,
University of California, Santa Barbara*
“Monumental. . . . Lee handles her scholarly materials with grace,
never overwhelming the reader with too many facts or incidents. She
tells an American story familiar to anyone who has read Walt
Whitman, seeking to capture America in all its diversity and
difference, while at the same time pleading for America to realize
its democratic potential. . . . Powerful Asian American stories . .
. are inspiring, and Lee herself does them justice in a book that
is long overdue.”
*LA Times*
"A well-written, panoramic view of Asian America from the colonial
era to the present that sheds light on how Asian immigrants have
sought to make their place in American society and, at the same
time, continually changed it."
*Nancy Foner, coauthor of Strangers No More and Distinguished
Professor of Sociology, Hunter College and Graduate Center,
CUNY*
"A sweeping study of the fastest growing group in the United States
that underscores the shameful racist regard white Americans have
long held for Asian immigrants. A historian of immigration whose
ancestors hailed from China, Lee (History/Univ. of Minnesota)
delineates the specific history of Asians in America—Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, Hmong, and others—while also lending a general
sense of what immigrants have endured: discrimination in work,
wages, education, and housing, and even incarceration during World
War II. . . . A powerful, timely story told with method and
dignity."
*Kirkus (starred review)*
“Accessibly written for a wide readership, The Making of Asian
America opens important, new perspectives on the relationship of
the U.S. and the world.”
*Donna Gabaccia, Professor of History, University of Toronto
Scarborough*
"Pokes holes in the 'model minority' myth by pointing out that
Asians in the United States are overrepresented at both ends of the
socioeconomic spectrum, and that before World War II, the group was
frequently portrayed as being incompatible with American society.
An impressive work that details how this diverse population has
both swayed and been affected by the United States. Highly
recommended for readers interested in this important topic."
*Library Journal (starred review)*
"Erika Lee’s new narrative of Asian American history deserves
consideration to complement, if not supplant, celebrated earlier
syntheses. Incorporating compelling revisionist approaches, Lee
peels back several centuries of time to locate the origins of
Chinese in America to the founding of the Spanish empire in America
in the sixteenth century. . . . She further insists on the
mainstreaming of Asian American history in the United States."
*Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Professor of History and American Studies, Brown
University*
“In her sweeping, powerful new book, Lee considers the rich,
complicated, and sometimes invisible histories of Asians in the
United States.”
*Huffington Post*
“Comprehensive, informative, and engaging. . . . The Making of
Asian America is full of fascinating stories about immigrants who
left a mark on their adopted country.”
*The Oregonian*
"Epic and eye-opening."
*Minneapolis Star-Tribune*
"An ambitious, sweeping, and insightful survey."
*Publishers Weekly*
"The Making of Asian America chronicles the past and connects it to
the present. . . . an important document of history."
*Minneapolis Post*
"Racism, as Lee shows, was the unifying factor in the
Asian-American experience, bringing together twenty-three distinct
immigrant groups, from very different parts of the world. . . . In
the eyes of some, Asians in America are, Lee writes, 'perpetual
foreigners at worst, or probationary Americans at best.' If Asians
sometimes remain silent in the face of racism, and if some seem to
work unusually hard in the face of this difficult history, it is
not because they want to be part of a 'model minority,' but because
they have often had no other choice."
*The New Yorker*
“Accessible yet sweeping. . . . Synthesizing many of the exciting
discoveries and arguments that have emerged in the field of Asian
American history in the past few decades, The Making of Asian
America is a must-read for anyone curious about the U.S. and its
history.”
*Book Riot*
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