Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends
Regular price
€33.99
1900s
1950s
A01=Charlotte Brooks
academic
acceptance
activism
advocacy
american
asian
Author_Charlotte Brooks
california
Category=JBFD
Category=JBSL
Category=NHTB
city
community
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnicity
historical
history
homes
housing
identity
immigrant
immigration
leader
leadership
marketplace
markets
middle class
minorities
minority
multiracial
neighborhood
postwar
race
racism
racist
research
rights
scholarly
segregation
social studies
urban
west coast
western
wwii
Product details
- ISBN 9780226004181
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 15 x 22mm
- Publication Date: 21 Dec 2012
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Between the early 1900s and the late 1950s, the attitudes of white Californians toward their Asian American neighbors evolved from outright hostility to relative acceptance. Charlotte Brooks examines this transformation through the lens of California's urban housing markets, arguing that the perceived foreignness of Asian Americans, which initially stranded them in segregated areas, eventually facilitated their integration into neighborhoods that rejected other minorities. Against the backdrop of Cold War efforts to win Asian hearts and minds, whites who saw little difference between Asians and Asian Americans increasingly advocated the latter group's access to middle-class life and the residential areas that went with it. But as they transformed Asian Americans into a "model minority," whites purposefully ignored the long backstory of Chinese and Japanese Americans' early and largely failed attempts to participate in public and private housing programs.
As Brooks tells this multifaceted story, she draws on a broad range of sources in multiple languages, giving voice to an array of community leaders, journalists, activists, and homeowners - and insightfully conveying the complexity of racialized housing in a multiracial society.
Charlotte Brooks is associate professor of history at Baruch College, City University of New York.
