Japanese American Millennials: Rethinking Generation, Community, and Diversity

Whereas most scholarship on Japanese Americans looks at historical case studies or the 1.5 generation assimilating, this pioneering anthology, Japanese American Millennials, captures theexperiences, perspectives, and aspirations of Asian Americans born between 1980 and 2000. The editors and contributors present multiple perspectives on who Japanese Americans are, how they think about notions of community and culture, and how they engage and negotiate multiple social identities.

The essays by scholars both in the United States and Japan draw upon the Japanese American millennial experience to examine how they find self-expression in Youth Basketball Leagues or Christian youth camps as well as how they grapple with being mixed-race, bicultural, or queer. Featuring compelling interviews and observations, Japanese American Millennials dislodges the dominant generational framework toaddress absences in the current literature and suggests how we might alternatively study Japanese Americans as a whole.

Michael Omi is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-author (with Howard Winant) of Racial Formation in the United States (3rd edition, 2015).
Dana Y. Nakano is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Gerontology, and Gender Studies at California State University, Stanislaus.
Jeffrey T. Yamashita is a Ph.D. Candidate in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.