Winner, 2013-2014 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, Adult
Non-Fiction presented by the Asian Pacific American Librarian
Association During the Cold War, Soviet propaganda highlighted U.S.
racism in order to undermine the credibility of U.S. democracy. In
response, incorporating racial and ethnic minorities in order to affirm
that America worked to ensure the rights of all and was superior to
communist countries became a national imperative. In Citizens of Asian
America, Cindy I-Fen Cheng explores how Asian Americans figured in this
effort to shape the credibility of American democracy, even while the
perceived "foreignness" of Asian Americans cast them as likely alien
subversives whose activities needed monitoring following the communist
revolution in China and the outbreak of the Korean War. While histories
of international politics and U.S. race relations during the Cold War
have largely overlooked the significance of Asian Americans, Cheng
challenges the black-white focus of the existing historiography. She
highlights how Asian Americans made use of the government's desire to be
leader of the "free world" by advocating for civil rights reforms, such
as housing integration, increased professional opportunities, and
freedom from political persecution. Further, Cheng examines the
liberalization of immigration policies, which worked not only to
increase the civil rights of Asian Americans but also to improve the
nation's ties with Asian countries, providing an opportunity for the
U.S. government to broadcast, on a global scale, the freedom and
opportunity that American society could offer.
