The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker

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.

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.