Helen Zia Book order

The dramatic, real-life stories of four young people caught in the mass exodus from Shanghai following China's 1949 Communist Revolution highlight the struggles faced by emigrants today. Shanghai, once China's jewel and a hub of modernity, became a city of fear as Mao's revolution took hold. Many citizens, terrified of the impending horrors, fled in every direction. Seventy years later, the last generation to remember this exodus shared their experiences with journalist Helen Zia, who interviewed numerous exiles about their tumultuous journeys. From these accounts, Zia narrates the stories of four young residents grappling with the choice to abandon their lives for uncertain futures as refugees in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the U.S. Young Benny, reluctantly inheriting his father's wartime legacy, must decide whether to escape to Hong Kong or navigate a newly Communist China. Annuo, fleeing with her father, becomes an unwelcome exile in Taiwan. Ho, facing deportation, fights to continue his studies in the U.S. while his family struggles back home. Lastly, Bing, given away by her impoverished parents, confronts the challenges of starting anew among strangers in America.

The fascinating story of the rise of Asian Americans as a politically and socially influential racial groupThis groundbreaking book is about the transformation of Asian Americans from a few small, disconnected, and largely invisible ethnic groups into a self-identified racial group that is influencing every aspect of American society. It explores the junctures that shocked Asian Americans into motion and shaped a new consciousness, including the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, by two white autoworkers who believed he was Japanese; the apartheid-like working conditions of Filipinos in the Alaska canneries; the boycott of Korean American greengrocers in Brooklyn; the Los Angeles riots; and the casting of non-Asians in the Broadway musical Miss Saigon. The book also examines the rampant stereotypes of Asian Americans.Helen Zia, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, was born in the 1950s when there were only 150,000 Chinese Americans in the entire country, and she writes as a personal witness to the dramatic changes involving Asian Americans.Written for both Asian Americans―the fastest-growing population in the United States―and non-Asians, Asian American Dreams argues that America can no longer afford to ignore these emergent, vital, and singular American people.