Random House New Releases - Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies

Yellow Peril! by Dylan Yates

2013-11-05T00:30:00-05:00

Yellow Peril! Five Centuries of Anti-Asian Fascination and Fear
Written by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yates

Trade Paperback, 336 pages | Verso | Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies | $26.95 | 978-1-78168-123-7 (1-78168-123-6)

The "yellow peril" is one of the most long-standing and pervasive racist ideas in Western culture—indeed, this book traces its history to the Enlightenment era. Yet while Fu Manchu evokes a fading historical memory, yellow peril ideology persists, animating, for example, campaign commercials from the 2012 presidential election. Yellow Peril! is the first comprehensive repository of anti-Asian images and writing, pop culture artifacts and political polemic.

Written by two leading scholars and replete with paintings, photographs and images drawn from dime novels, posters, comics, theatrical productions, movies, polemical and pseudo-scholarly literature, and other pop culture ephemera, this book is both a unique and fascinating archive and a modern analysis of this crucial historical formation.

Yellow Peril! by Dylan Yates

2013-11-05T00:30:00-05:00

Yellow Peril! Five Centuries of Anti-Asian Fascination and Fear
Written by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yates

Hardcover, 336 pages | Verso | Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies | $95.00 | 978-1-78168-124-4 (1-78168-124-4)

Yellow Peril! by Dylan Yates

2013-11-05T00:30:00-05:00

Yellow Peril! Five Centuries of Anti-Asian Fascination and Fear
Written by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yates

eBook, 336 pages | Verso | Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies | $26.95 | 978-1-78168-185-5 (1-78168-185-6)

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

2010-09-21T00:30:00-05:00

Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Written by Barbara Demick

Trade Paperback, 336 pages | Spiegel & Grau | Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies | $16.00 | 978-0-385-52391-2 (0-385-52391-2)

A National Book Award finalist and National Book Critics Circle finalist, Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy is a remarkable view into North Korea, as seen through the lives of six ordinary citizens

Award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, where displays of affection are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and sensitive reporting we see her subjects fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of abundance, their country has betrayed them.

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

2009-12-29T00:30:00-05:00

Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Written by Barbara Demick

Hardcover, 336 pages | Spiegel & Grau | Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies | $26.00 | 978-0-385-52390-5 (0-385-52390-4)

A National Book Award finalist and National Book Critics Circle finalist, Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy is a remarkable view into North Korea, as seen through the lives of six ordinary citizens

Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life.

Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects—average North Korean citizens—fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them.

Nothing to Envy is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

2009-12-29T00:30:00-05:00

Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Written by Barbara Demick

eBook | Spiegel & Grau | Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies | $11.99 | 978-0-385-52961-7 (0-385-52961-9)

A National Book Award finalist and National Book Critics Circle finalist, Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy is a remarkable view into North Korea, as seen through the lives of six ordinary citizens

Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life.

Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects—average North Korean citizens—fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them.

Nothing to Envy is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.

From the Hardcover edition.

Chinatown Beat by Henry Chang

2007-11-01T00:30:00-05:00

Chinatown Beat
Written by Henry Chang

Trade Paperback, 220 pages | Soho Crime | Fiction - Mystery & Detective; Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies; Fiction - Mystery & Detective - Police Procedural | $12.00 | 978-1-56947-478-5 (1-56947-478-8)

“This is a nasty, terse slice of noir, and Yu is a fellow whose adventures should be worth following.”—The Washington Post Book World

“For readers who relish noir suspense, it doesn't get much better than this stunning novel."—The Boston Globe

“It is an evocative, often bleak, but fascinating view of being at ‘cross-cultural odds’ that fuels Chinatown Beat, the successful debut by New York author Henry Chang.”—South Florida Sun-Sentinel

“Chinatown Beat is a classic noir, filled with longing, violence, and that uniquely urban melancholy, but it also brings something new to the table, a loving specificity of a people and place, the multicultures of New York’s Chinatown, that has rarely if ever been encountered in fiction before. A real discovery.”—Richard Price, author of Freedomland and Clockers

“An auspicious beginning.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch

NYPD Detective Jack Yu was raised in Chinatown. Some of his old friends are criminals now; some are dead.

Recently transferred to his old neighborhood, where 99 percent of the cops are white, Jack is confronted with a serial rapist who preys on young Chinese girls. Then Uncle Four, an elderly leader of the charitable Hip Ching Society and member of the Hong Kong-based Red Circle Triad, is gunned down. To solve these crimes, Jack turns to both modern police methods and an ancient fortuneteller.

Henry Chang was born and raised in New York City’s Chinatown, where he now lives. He is a graduate of the Pratt Institute and The City College of New York and is currently a security director in Manhattan.

Chinatown Beat by Henry Chang

2007-11-01T00:30:00-05:00

Chinatown Beat
Written by Henry Chang

eBook, 220 pages | Soho Crime | Fiction - Mystery & Detective; Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies; Fiction - Mystery & Detective - Police Procedural | $13.00 | 978-1-56947-684-0 (1-56947-684-5)

“Here’s a dark slice of New York’s Chinatown that most of us...have probably never seen. Henry Chang takes us on an unforgettable guided tour of its lower depths. In a field awash with pallid noir thrillers, this one is the real thing. A genuine winner.”—Herbert H. Lieberman, author of City of the Dead and Shadow Dancers

“A dramatic evocation of the exotic. . . . More rewarding than a trip to Chinatown.”—Qin Xiaolong, author of Death of a Red Herione

Detective Jack Yu grew up in Chinatown. Some of his friends are criminals now; some are dead. Jack has just been transferred to his old neighborhood, where 99 percent of the cops are white. Unlike the others, confused by the residents who speak another language even when they’re speaking English, Jack knows what’s going on.

He is confronted with a serial rapist who preys on young Chinese girls. Then Uncle Four, an elderly and respected leader of the charitable Hip Ching Society and member of the Hong Kong-based Red Circle Triad, is gunned down. Jack learns that benevolent Uncle Four had a gorgeous young mistress imported from Hong Kong. And she is missing.

To solve these crimes, Jack turns to an elderly fortune teller, an old friend of his, in addition to employing modern police methods. This debut mystery power-fully conveys the sights, sounds, and smells of Chinatown, as well as the attitudes of its inhabitants.

From the Hardcover edition.

Driven Out by Jean Pfaelzer

2007-05-29T00:30:00-05:00

Driven Out The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans
Written by Jean Pfaelzer

eBook, 432 pages | Random House | History - United States - 19th Century; Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies | $14.99 | 978-1-58836-640-5 (1-58836-640-5)

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

The brutal and systematic “ethnic cleansing” of Chinese Americans in California and the Pacific Northwest in the second half of the nineteenth century is a shocking–and virtually unexplored–chapter of American history. Driven Out unearths this forgotten episode in our nation’s past. Drawing on years of groundbreaking research, Jean Pfaelzer reveals how, beginning in 1848, lawless citizens and duplicitous politicians purged dozens of communities of thousands of Chinese residents–and how the victims bravely fought back.
In town after town, as races and classes were pitted against one another in the raw and anarchistic West, Chinese miners and merchants, lumberjacks and field workers, prostitutes and merchants’ wives, were gathered up at gunpoint and marched out of town, sometimes thrown into railroad cars along the very tracks they had built.

Here, in vivid detail, are unforgettable incidents such as the torching of the Chinatown in Antioch, California, after Chinese prostitutes were accused of giving seven young men syphilis, and a series of lynchings in Los Angeles bizarrely provoked by a Chinese wedding. From the port of Seattle to the mining towns in California’s Siskiyou Mountains to “Nigger Alley” in Los Angeles, the first Chinese Americans were hanged, purged, and banished. Chinatowns across the West were burned to the ground.

But the Chinese fought back: They filed the first lawsuits for reparations in the United States, sued for the restoration of their property, prosecuted white vigilantes, demanded the right to own land, and, years before Brown v. Board of Education, won access to public education for their children. Chinese Americans organized strikes and vegetable boycotts in order to starve out towns that tried to expel them. They ordered arms from China and, with Winchester rifles and Colt revolvers, defended themselves. In 1893, more than 100,000 Chinese Americans refused the government’s order to wear photo identity cards to prove their legal status–the largest mass civil disobedience in United States history to that point.

Driven Out features riveting characters, both heroic and villainous, white and Asian. Charles McGlashen, a newspaper editor, spearheaded a shift in the tactics of persecution, from brutality to legal boycotts of the Chinese, in order to mount a run for governor of California. Fred Bee, a creator of the Pony Express, became the Chinese consul and one of the few attorneys willing to defend the Chinese. Lum May, a dry goods store owner, saw his wife dragged from their home and driven insane. President Grover Cleveland, hoping that China’s 400,000 subjects would buy the United States out of its economic crisis, persuaded China to abandon the overseas Chinese in return for a trade treaty. Quen Hing Tong, a merchant, sought an injunction against the city of San Jose in an important precursor to today’s suits against racial profiling and police brutality.

In Driven Out, Jean Pfaelzer sheds a harsh light on America’s past. This is a story of hitherto unknown racial pogroms, purges, roundups, and brutal terror, but also a record of valiant resistance and community. This deeply resonant and eye-opening work documents a significant and disturbing episode in American history.

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting by Vijay Prashad

2002-11-18T00:30:00-05:00

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity
Written by Vijay Prashad

eBook | Beacon Press | Social Science - Ethnic Studies; Social Science - African-American Studies; Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies | $20.00 | 978-0-8070-5029-3 (0-8070-5029-6)

Selected as One of the Village Voice's Favorite 25 Books of 2001

In this landmark work, historian Vijay Prashad refuses to engage the typical racial discussion that matches people of color against each other while institutionalizing the primacy of the white majority. Instead he examines more than five centuries of remarkable historical evidence of cultural and political interaction between Blacks and Asians around the world, in which they have exchanged cultural and religious symbols, appropriated personas and lifestyles, and worked together to achieve political change.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting by Vijay Prashad

2002-11-18T00:30:00-05:00

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity
Written by Vijay Prashad

Trade Paperback, 232 pages | Beacon Press | Social Science - Ethnic Studies; Social Science - African-American Studies; Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies | $20.00 | 978-0-8070-5011-8 (0-8070-5011-3)

Discourse By Three Drunkards On Government by Nakae Chomin

1992-10-01T00:30:00-05:00

Discourse By Three Drunkards On Government
Written by Nakae Chomin

Trade Paperback, 144 pages | Weatherhill | Political Science - Government; Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies | $18.95 | 978-0-8348-0192-9 (0-8348-0192-2)

A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government takes the form of a debate between a spokesman for Western ideals of democracy and progress, and an advocate for adherence to traditional samurai values. Their discussion is moderated by the imperturbable Master Nankai, who loves nothing more than to drink and argue politics. The fiction of the drinking bout allowed Chomin to debate freely topical political issues, in a discussion that offers an astute analysis of contemporary European politics and a prophetic vision of Japan's direction. This lucid and precise translation of a delightful work has been designated one of the UNESCO series of classics of world literature.

Random House New Releases - Social Science - Ethnic Studies - Asian American Studies

Yellow Peril! by Dylan Yates

Yellow Peril! Five Centuries of Anti-Asian Fascination and FearWritten by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yates

Yellow Peril! by Dylan Yates

Yellow Peril! Five Centuries of Anti-Asian Fascination and FearWritten by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yates

Yellow Peril! by Dylan Yates

Yellow Peril! Five Centuries of Anti-Asian Fascination and FearWritten by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yates

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North KoreaWritten by Barbara Demick

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North KoreaWritten by Barbara Demick

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North KoreaWritten by Barbara Demick

Chinatown Beat by Henry Chang

Chinatown Beat Written by Henry Chang

Chinatown Beat by Henry Chang

Chinatown Beat Written by Henry Chang

Driven Out by Jean Pfaelzer

Driven Out The Forgotten War Against Chinese AmericansWritten by Jean Pfaelzer

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting by Vijay Prashad

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural PurityWritten by Vijay Prashad

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting by Vijay Prashad

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural PurityWritten by Vijay Prashad

Discourse By Three Drunkards On Government by Nakae Chomin

Discourse By Three Drunkards On Government Written by Nakae Chomin

Yellow Peril! Five Centuries of Anti-Asian Fascination and Fear
Written by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yates

Yellow Peril! Five Centuries of Anti-Asian Fascination and Fear
Written by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yates

Yellow Peril! Five Centuries of Anti-Asian Fascination and Fear
Written by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yates

Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Written by Barbara Demick

Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Written by Barbara Demick

Nothing to Envy Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Written by Barbara Demick

Chinatown Beat
Written by Henry Chang

Chinatown Beat
Written by Henry Chang

Driven Out The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans
Written by Jean Pfaelzer

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity
Written by Vijay Prashad

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity
Written by Vijay Prashad

Discourse By Three Drunkards On Government
Written by Nakae Chomin