Chinatown, Honolulu: Place, Race, and Empire - Softcover

Riley, Nancy E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231196792 ISBN 13: 9780231196796

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2024

Synopsis

The Chinese experience in Hawai‘i has long been told as a story of inclusion and success. During the Cold War, the United States touted the Chinese community in Hawai‘i as an example of racial harmony and American opportunity, claiming that all ethnic groups had the possibility to attain middle-class lives. Today, Honolulu’s Chinatown is not only a destination for tourism and consumption but also a celebration of Chinese accomplishments, memorializing past discrimination and present prominence within a framework of multiculturalism. This narrative, however, conceals many other histories and processes that played crucial roles in shaping Chinatown.

This book offers a critical account of the history of Chinese in Hawai‘i from the mid-nineteenth century to the present in this context of U.S. empire, settler colonialism, and racialization. Nancy E. Riley foregrounds elements that are often left out of narratives of Chinese history in Hawai‘i, particularly the place of Native Hawaiians, geopolitics and U.S. empire building, and the ongoing construction of race and whiteness. Tracing how Chinatown became a site of historical remembrance, she argues that it is also used to reinforce the ideology of neoliberal multiculturalism, which upholds racial hierarchy by lauding certain ethnic groups while excluding others. An insightful and in-depth analysis of the story of Honolulu’s Chinatown, this book offers new perspectives on the making of the racial landscape of Hawai‘i and the United States more broadly.

About this title

About the Author

Nancy E. Riley is A. Myrick Freeman Professor of Social Sciences at Bowdoin College. Her most recent book is Controlling Reproduction: Women, Society, and State Power (with Nilanjana Chatterjee, 2023).

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231196792
• ISBN 13: 9780231196796
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288