The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker
by Eric Liu
Book Description
What is race for? That bracing question animates every page of The Accidental Asian, a powerful work from one
of the nation's leading young voices. In these personal and poignant reflections on assimilation,
Eric Liu articulates a vision of American identity that will provoke and inspire. For Liu, the price of
assimilation became clear when he tried to read a memorial book about his father's life, composed in Chinese,
and found himself staring at a blur of indecipherable characters. There in his hands was the measure of his
inheritance. Liu, meanwhile, has watched with both wonder and concern as a pan-ethnic Asian American
identity has taken shape. Here now is a race that offers a new source of roots--but also tightens the hold that
color has upon our minds.
Like so many in the second generation, Liu doesn't know whether to embrace, resist, or redefine assimilation--
and ends up doing all three at once. He speaks candidly about his journey from a fierce pursuit of racelessness to a slow
rapprochement with race. He is not afraid to reveal his ambivalence. At bottom, Liu is an "accidental Asian"--someone who has stumbled upon a sense of race, who is not always sure what to do with it.
Weaving narrative and analysis into a series of elegant essays, Liu addresses a broad range of questions:
¸ Is whiteness America's fundamental race problem?
¸ Are Asian Americans really the New Jews?
¸ Should we fear the rising might of China?
¸ What does a journey through Chinatown
reveal about our own lives?
¸ What might intermarriage mean for Asian
Americans--and for the future of race itself?
The clear voice in these pages will resonate with Americans of every hue. Beyond black and white, conservative and liberal,
native and alien, lies a vast and fertile field of human experience. It is this field that Liu, with insight and compassion, invites us to explore. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Amazon.com
As a second-generation Chinese-American, Eric Liu has grown up with an awkward relationship to race and ethnic identity. He can follow a conversation in Chinese, although he would have problems if he tried to take part in it; as for the written language, he is functionally illiterate. He would be the first person to question which of his personality traits are "Chinese" or "American," "Asian" or "white," or none of the above, and The Accidental Asian is, in fact, a rigorous self-examination--not merely about the costs and benefits of assimilation, but about whether assimilation should even be viewed in those terms.Whether he's recalling his adolescent frustration with "Chinese hair" that just wouldn't permit itself to be styled, examining the history of Chinatown, or pondering the mixture of fear and fascination with which China is viewed by Americans, Liu writes with admirable personal intensity. It doesn't matter whether you consider The Accidental Asian to be a memoir or a batch of interconnected essays; once you've read it, you will be forced to consider for yourself what place, if any, race has in America today (but even more so tomorrow). --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Back Cover
"Eric Liu has written a powerful memoir, a memoir that renders the Asian Americanexperience with a depth and a passion reminiscent
of Richard Wright's Black Boy. It is a major contribution to the literature that defines what it means to be an American."
--Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
"The Accidental Asian is an intelligent, moving and painfully instructive story of an Asian American life, and will certainly become
essential reading for all those who would ask what is the face--and heart--of an imminent America."
--Chang-rae Lee, author of Native Speaker
" Incisive, balanced, and frank, The Accidental Asian deals persuasively with the often overlooked struggles Asian Americans face in
defining their identity in the turbulent American landscape . . . Provocative musings on the subjects of race and identity." --Kirkus Reviews --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Publisher
Random House editor Jon Karp: In THE ACCIDENTAL ASIAN, Eric Liu has written a personal and a political exploration of race very much in the tradition of books by Henry Louis Gates, Shelby Steele, and Richard Rodriguez. The difference, of course, is Eric's vantage point. While there have been many political memoirs by blacks and Latinos, fewer Asian-American voices have been heard. In Eric Liu, we have one of the most dynamic and intelligent young writers in the country. He is only 28 years old and he has already been featured on the cover of Newsweek as a leading voice of Generation X. He started a national magazine as a student at Yale University, after which he was hired by Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Ultimately, he moved to the White House, where he became the youngest speechwriter on President Clinton's staff. Recently, he has been a weekly commentator on MSNBC and a regular speaker on college campuses, while studying law at Harvard and writing for Slate. As you may have surmised, Eric is a bit of an overachiever.
His book is at turns piercing in its insights into the politics of race and poignant in its depiction of the lives of assimilated Asian-Americans. Here's one example: Eric tries to read a journal about his father's early life in China, but he can't make any sense of it because the journal is written in Chinese, a language he barely knows. That is just one example of the distance between one generation and another, and it serves as a dramatic starting point for a fascinating intellectual journey.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Eric Liu, twenty-nine, has been a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and a commentator for MSNBC. A regular contributor to Slate,
he has also written for The Washington
Post Magazine and USA Weekend. After founding The Next Progressive, an acclaimed journal of opinion, he edited the anthology Next:
Young American Writers on the New Generation. He is a graduate of Yale College and is now enrolled at Harvard Law School. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Keywords: The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker, Books, Eric Liu, Fiction, Sociology, Biography & Autobiography, Political, Ethnic Cultures - General, General
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