UCLA

This chapter furnishes a rainbow cross section of California through Asian American lenses. Unsettling memories about Asia and racial preconceptions haunt the Korean, Filipino, and Vietnamese newcomers, weakening their footholds on the West Coast. Several Bay Area authors envision the possibility of building an inclusive community. The Southern Californian writers, in contrast, paint a grim picture of race relations, exposing mutual prejudices and structural inequalities that erupt in hostile behavior and urban strife. Most individual quests are embedded in the broader historical drama.