Becoming Asian American

Nazli Kibria draws on interviews with second-generation Chinese and Korean Americans to explore their experiences of race, identity, and adaptation in the United States. The book aims to go beyond the frameworks created to study white ethnic or racial minority experiences to examine the unique process of integration and acceptance into mainstream American society reported by those from this group who came of age in America in the 1980s and 1990s. Kibria looks at experiences from childhood, daily life and interaction with non-Asian Americans, college, work, and the problems of intermarriage and child-raising and finds differences between the experiences reported by this group and those found in studies of others. While those differences seem to enable members of this group to achieve an unusual degree of successful integration and acceptance into American society, it is an achievement they admit they can never take for granted. Instead, group members report that to maintain this acceptance "requires constant effort on their part".Kibria suggests further developments may resolve this situation - especially the emergence of a new kind of pan-Asian American identity that would complement the Chinese or Korean American identity rather than replace it.