No comments about Engineering a Successful Life.

No comments about Portraits of Influential Chinese Educators (CERC Studies in Comparative Education).

No comments about Rosemary: A journey from East to West.

No comments about Maya Lin (Asian Americans of Achievement).

No comments about Beijing Diary: The personal story of a remarkable theatrical and political event- the production of an all-Chinese version of The Caine Mutiny Court-martial in Bejiing..

No comments about A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Writers.

No comments about Jumping Through Hoops: Autobiographical Stories by Modern Chinese Women Writers.

2 comments about Of Orphans and Warriors: Inventing Chinese-American Culture and Identity.

1. Excellent book! As a second generation Asian American woman, I found this book to be revealing, eye-opening and inspiring.



2. This is an intensely frustrating book. Despite the interesting subject matter and useful historical summaries, I found this book to be initially engaging but also massively under-theorised.

   The best segments of the book are Chun's analysis of the post WW-II period as a key time in the reformulation of Chinese American identity. However, her use of bland generalizations instead of demonstrated theoretical links mean that her analyses rarely proceed beyond the obvious.

   Chun's highly biographical approach is at its best when she deals with characters with long paper trails. Her analysis of literary figures is also informative.

   However, we are only given incidental examination of key issues such as gender, race, class-structure and religion. The social and cultural milieus in which key informants moved are given scant attention for a work of cultural analysis. In this regard, her discussion of the Sixties and Seventies (for example) read more like a summary rather than an investigation: Which specific elements of Black Panther philosophy (as opposed to a generalized 'stick it to the man' factor), if any, appealed to the Asian American architects of Yellow Power? Did the examples of feminist and womanist workers such as Germaine Greer and Angela Davis have any effect on young Chinese American women? How did the mechanics of desire(the fetishization of Asian women the feminization Asian men)factor into the Sexual Revolution? Unfortunately, Chun does not give us sufficient evidence to evaluate the claims she makes. By the same token, unfortunate errors of detail (such as the use of Lin Yutang's given name rather than his family name, on p. 51 and 53)also act to compromise Chun's authority. While her 'talk-story' style might be viewed as an attempt to challenge academic genres of writing, this work, at base, is an academic project(and not fiction) and therefore must be assessed as such.

   I am extremely sympathetic to the goals and aims of this book and applaud Chun's attempt to address some interesting questions but ultimately I found that this book fails to deliver much in the way of truly satisfying nuanced analysis (as opposed to the representation of experience).

No comments about Joseph De Premare, S.J. 1666-1736: Chinese Philology and Figurism (Acta Jutlandica).

No comments about Madman of Ch'U: The Chinese Myth of Loyalty and Dissent.