Overview

Delves into the long history of Asian American sporting cultures, considering how identities and communities are negotiated on sporting fields Through a close examination of Asian American sporting cultures ranging from boxing and basketball to spelling bees and wrestling, the contributors reveal the intimate connection between sport and identity formation. Sport plays a special role in the processes of citizen-making and of the policing of national and diasporic bodies. It is thus one key area in which Asian American stereotypes may be challenged, negotiated, and destroyed as athletic performances create multiple opportunities for claiming American identities. This volume incorporates work on Pacific Islander, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Americans as well as East Asian Americans, and explores how sports are gendered, including examinations of Asian American men's attempts to claim masculinity through sporting cultures as well as the ""Orientalism"" evident in discussions of mixed martial arts as practiced by Asian American female fighters. This American story illuminates how marginalized communities perform their American-ness through co-ethnic and co-racial sporting spaces.

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9781479884698

Table of Contents

Reviews

A wonderful read for and about sports s observers, participants, scholars, and fans. With a wide variety of approaches ranging from media analysis to autoethnography, this collection of smart and accessible essays provides a great model for thinking about sports and through sports about ethnicity, race, and gender in specific local, transnational, and historical contexts. -Erica Rand, author of Red Nails, Black Skates: Gender, Cash, and Pleasure On and Off the Ice

Author Information

Stanley I. Thangaraj is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at City College of New York. Constancio R. Arnaldo, Jr. is Visiting Assistant Professor of Asian/Asian American Studies at Miami University, Ohio. Christina B. Chin is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the California State University, Fullerton. J. Jack Halberstam is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Halberstam is the author of In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, Female Masculinity and co-author with Del LaGrace Volcano of The Drag King Book. Lisa Lowe is Professor of English and American Studies at Tufts University, and a member of the consortium of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora. She is the author of Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics, and The Intimacies of Four Continents.

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