AARC Books

By Catherine Ceniza Choy: In the last fifty years, transnational adoption—specifically, the adoption of Asian children—has exploded in popularity as an alternative path to family making. Despite the cultural acceptance of this practice, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the factors that allowed Asian international adoption to flourish. In Global Families, Catherine Ceniza Choy unearths the little-known historical origins of Asian international adoption in the United States. Beginning with the post-World War II presence of the U.S....

By Catherine Ceniza Choy: In western countries, including the United States, foreign-trained nurses constitute a crucial labor supply. Far and away the largest number of these nurses come from the Philippines. Why is it that a developing nation with a comparatively greater need for trained medical professionals sends so many of its nurses to work in wealthier countries? Catherine Ceniza Choy engages this question through an examination of the unique relationship between the professionalization of nursing and the twentieth-century migration of Filipinos to the...

By Lok Siu and Khachig Tölölyan: This volume provides important insights into the Chinese diaspora through a mix of disciplinary approaches and a wide range of topics, historical periods, thematic foci, and geographical sites. In this way, the volume provides a set of entry points to illuminate the immense diversity that constitutes the Chinese diaspora. It is a valuable addition both to diaspora studies more generally and to our understanding of the ongoing and specific processes that these 50 million people are engaged in as they make and...

By Jinsoo An: The colonial experience of the early twentieth century shaped Korea’s culture and identity, leaving a troubling past that was subtly reconstructed in South Korean postcolonial cinema. Relating postcolonial discourses to a reading of Manchurian action films, kisaeng and gangster films, and revenge horror films, Parameters of Disavowal shows how filmmakers reworked, recontextualized, and erased ideas and symbols of colonial power. In particular, Jinsoo An examines how South Korean films privileged certain sites, such as the kisaeng...