Asian American Culture: From Anime to Tiger Moms. Edited by Lan Dong. Cultures of the American Mosaic. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2016. 2 vols. Acid free $189 (ISBN 978-1-4408-2920-8). E-book available (978-1-4408-2921-5), call for pricing.
Asian American Culture: From Anime to Tiger Moms is a two-volume reference work that consists of 170 articles discussing many aspects of Asian American culture. Editor Lan Dong has broadly defined Asian American culture “to encompass the historical as well as contemporary cultural practices and productions related to Asian Americans” (xxix).
The entries are organized alphabetically by title and each essay is signed by the author. Each volume contains a “Guide to Related Topics,” that classifies the articles according to ten major themes like “Art, Music, and Theater,” “Family and Community,” “Food,” “Gender and Sexuality,” “History and Immigration,” “Media, Sports, and Entertainment,” and “Religion, Spirituality, and Belief.” Each entry concludes with “see also” cross-references that direct the reader to related topics and also suggestions for “Further Reading.” Volume 2 contains a ten-page bibliography of “Recommended Resources,” descriptions of the editor and 68 contributors, and a comprehensive index.
The major strength of Asian American Culture: From Anime to Tiger Moms is in the broad coverage of many of the Asian American groups including those historically underrepresented, such as the Burmese, Cambodian, Indonesian, Laotian, Singaporean, Thai, and Tibetan Americans. Sections for each ethnic group vary in length. The Cambodian American section is the lengthiest underrepresented group at approximately thirty pages whereas the Indonesian, Laotian, and Tibetan American cultures contain the least amount of information with entries around three pages. Readers will discover extensive information about the Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Indian, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese American cultures.
The cultural topics addressed differ depending on the Asian American group, but typically a brief historical overview is provided for each. Cultural essays may focus specifically about art, education, family, fiction, films, folklore, food, immigration, literature, poetry, politics, religion, sports, theater, and women.
There have been many reference works published about Asian Americans in the last few years. Some of which include Mary Yu Danico’s four-volume Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia (Sage 2014) and Xiaojian Zhao and Edward J. W. Park’s three-volume Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History (Greenwood 2014). Asian American Culture: From Anime to Tiger Moms is not as large in scope compared with the other titles and contains some overlapping content. However, it has some unique content including entries such as “Acupuncture,” “Chinese Calligraphy,” “Dragon Lady and Lotus Blossom,” “Sushi,” and of course, the “Tiger Mom.”
Black-and-white photographs, additional text and sidebars about historical events, legal cases, people, and documents have been integrated into many of the sections. For example, the piece about Korean Americans incorporates accompanying text about the “Fox Girl” with the folklore entry “The 1992 Los Angeles Riots” under immigration, and a biographical entry about “Mary Paik Lee (1900–1995)” in the “Korean American Women” section.
Asian American Culture: From Anime to Tiger Moms would be useful as a supplement to other recent reference titles, and would be an excellent addition for those libraries who do not own the aforementioned 2014 reference sets—Megan Coder, Associate Librarian, State University of New York at New Paltz