The Columbia Guide to Asian American History

Gary Y. Okihiro (Margins and Mainstreams), professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, presents a compelling survey of 200 years of Asian-American experience and of its scholarly treatment in The Columbia Guide to Asian American History. Providing both a metanarrative about inherent historiographical problems, such as assumptions made in chronologies, and the histories and chronologies themselves, Okihiro discusses the persistent underestimations of the Hawaiian population before Captain Cook reached the islands in 1778; the relegation to textbooks, however exemplary, of Asian-American women's history; and the role of labor in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. (Dec.)