The Columbia Guide to Asian American History, and: A Resource Guide to Asian American literature (review)

The Columbia Guide to Asian American History. By Gary Y. Okihiro. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. xvii, 323 pp. $45.00. ISBN 0-231-11510-5.

A Resource Guide to Asian American Literature. Edited by Sau-ling Cynthia Wong and Stephen H. Sumida. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2001. vi, 345 pp. $40.00 (cloth); $22.00 (paper). ISBN 0-87352-2710; 0-87352-272-9.

"Being multicultural" in LIS today more often than not still simply means a token inclusion of African Americans and ignorance of the experience of other ethnic groups. While numerous handbooks exist on researching and teaching aspects of Hispanic American, Asian American, and other ethnic groups, it is my pleasure to bring two new books to the attention of the LIS community that I hope can help us expand the diversity of our research and teaching.

The first work is Gary Okihiro's Columbia Guide to Asian American History, which is a good handbook, although for those new to the subject it is perhaps best read in parallel with Ronald Takaki's narrative history, Strangers from a Different Shore. Okihiro is director of the Center for Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University and a senior scholar in the Association for Asian-American Studies, which is reflected in his handbook's emphasis on the research modes of Asian American studies over history, sociology, or other disciplines.

Okihiro's book follows the blueprint of other Columbia history guides, featuring a brief narrative history and chronology, a discussion of relevant historical periodizations, a sampling of historical debates (Hawaiian population, James Cook, models of migration, the Anti-Chinese Movement, and America's concentration camps). The guide concludes with a lengthy section on historiography and resources (being mostly an unannotated bibliography, filmography, and list of selected websites). The list of films could be of great help to instructors, even though it is far from complete and does not list distributors.

Okihiro's guide is important both as the output of one of Asian-American studies' leading historians and as an update to research published since the release of Hyung-Ching Kim's Asian American Studies (Greenwood, 1989). As such an important and authoritative work, flaws such as the poor index (which ignores the last third of the book) and points of debate should be brought to the foreground. Regarding the latter, Okihiro's division of "resources" into the categories "anti-Asianists," "liberal," and "Asian Americanists" is problematic for this reviewer; not only do I fear that this will confuse users, but, as Okihiro admits, his classification is a personal one that seems to reflect his own research agenda, concerns, and relationships. In addition, since so few of the books are annotated, users are not guided to more scholarly works (such as not highlighting Yuji Ichioka's Issei over Kazuo Ito's assemblage of the same title). Furthermore, some important references, such as Brian Niiya's Japanese American History: An A-to-Z Encyclopedia, seem not to be included. In Okihiro's main resource sections, though, such absences are rare but are more noticeable in subcategories, such as religion and education. It is also disappointing that Okihiro included so few dissertations and articles to represent emerging scholarly avenues.

The other work just published is Sau-ling Cynthia Wong and Stephen H. Sumida's Resource Guide to Asian American Literature, which is an ideal handbook for faculty who want to add Asian American literature to their curriculum. Wong and Sumida's edited collection is made up of biobibliographical essays on fifteen major novels/memoirs by Asian-Americans since World War II, six dramatic works, and four additional essays on Asian-American poetry, short fiction, and anthologies. While Wong (professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley) and Sumida (professor of American ethnic studies at the University of Washington) are both respected scholars on Asian...