E Pluribus Unum?: E Pluribus Plures?

These two large volumes, collectively composed of fifty-three essays by fifty-eight authors writing on just about every conceivably relevant subject and totaling over 1,000 pages, cannot be subject to a conventional review, if only because of the diversity of what is covered within them. Fairness can hardly be done to each of the authors by evaluation of their individual contributions, among which are engagingly written essays that are excellent appraisals of dozens of relevant literatures, of the implications of scholarship being done for the development of historical and social science knowledge, and of the directions of various subfields. Neither is it possible to appraise the choices the editors made in selecting the authors of the essays or the topics covered, because these editorial decisions are not explicitly addressed in either volume. In both cases, the roster of authors contains many historians, social scientists, ethnic studies scholars, and others of substantial accomplishments, with a massive list of publications to their collective credit and who have much in the way of expertise to recommend them.

Readers will find entryways into nearly everything they seek to know about immigration and ethnicity, in both the distant and the near past, on such matters as: population movement; immigration law and policy; border security and enforcement; naturalization and citizenship; work; socioeconomic mobility; partisan, labor, and protest politics; informal social acceptance and rejection and the roles of racism and nativism in both; gender and sexuality; family formation; settlement and residential patterns; religion; language retention and shift; assimilation and integration; organized criminal syndicates and activities; international relations; transnational circuits and networks; written and electronic communications with homelands; public history and historical representation; and teaching about and forming curricula around immigrations and ethnicities. These subjects are not equally present in both volumes, however, and the differences cannot always be accounted for in the singular features—racist immigration, naturalization, and citizenship laws and policies—that separate Asian and European experiences. Some topics covered by individual essays in the Bayor volume, but not in Yoo and Azuma's handbook, would seem of general interest (film representation; language retention, teaching and curricula; written communications; organized crime; medicine and eugenics; intermarriage; and border controls), and vice versa (Canadian immigration and ethnic patterns and bilateral law and policy connections; post-structural theory; LGBTQ presence and identity; family; intellectual history; court decisions and jurisprudence; education). Moreover, the Bayor volume does contain three essays dealing separately with and stressing the role of racialization in European (Dirk Hoerder), Asian (Madeline Y. Hsu), and Latino (Maria Cristina Garcia) immigrations and ethnicities. There is also an especially expert synthesis on African migrations (Joe William Trotter) that seamlessly combines the slave trade, internal migrations before and after Emancipation, and voluntary immigrations of people of color from Africa and the Caribbean in the last century.

The randomness of individual editorial choices aside, much of the difference between the volumes—based in the same broad processes of population movements, resettlements, and group community and identity formations within the U.S. societal context—can be attributed to the evolution of the general field in recent years. Specifically relevant are the history of the Asian American ethnic studies movement and discipline, as well as the singular features of Asian American experiences. Also important is the current fractured state of our national discourses about American identity and the ongoing work of nation building, which doesn't simply reflect our scholarship but is constitutive of national self-understandings. How historians convey the past in their writing and teaching and as engaged participants in public discourse—whether in interviews with the national or local media or in speaking casually with neighbors—is significant beyond our insular professional circles, especially in times of loss of confidence in national institutions, bitter ideological polarization, and widespread anxiety about the future.

Bayor's handbook might be a...