Overview
After his fatherās passing in 2019, David Shih sought to unravel the underlying tensions that defined the complex relationship between him and his parents. Ultimately, this forced a reckoning with the expectations he encountered as the only son of Chinese immigrants, and with the realities of what it means to be Asian in a de facto segregated country. At a moment when anti-Asian racism is increasingly overt,Ā Chinese ProdigalĀ is a work of rare subtlety, offering a new vocabulary for understanding a racial hierarchy too often conceived as binary.
In public life and in Shihās own, āAsian Americannessā has changed shape constantly, directed by the needs of the countryās racial imaginary. A sliding scale, visibility for Asians in America has always been relative to the meanings of white and Black. A memoir in essays,Ā Chinese ProdigalĀ examines the emergence of āAsian Americanā identity in a postāCivil Rights America in the wake of Vincent Chinās death. Shih guides us through the roles offered to Asian Americans to play, whether a model minority, a collaborator in the carceral state, or a plaintiff in the right-wing effort to dismantle affirmative action, illuminating what these issues have to teach us about American values and about the vexed place Asians and Asian Americans inhabit today. And mining his own experiencesāfrom his failures of filiality to his negotiations within an interracial marriageāShih masterfully captures the intimate costs of becoming an American.
Chinese ProdigalĀ knits together the personal, the historical, and the present, offering an incisive examination of a society and the people it has never made space for. It is a moving testimony of a son, father, and citizen stepping outside the identities imposed on him.
This book title, Chinese Prodigal (A Memoir in Eight Arguments) - 9780802158994, ISBN: 9780802158994, by David Shih, published by Grove Atlantic (August 15, 2023) is available in hardcover. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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