David K. Yoo

Mary Paik Lee left her native country in 1905, traveling with her parents as a political refugee after Japan imposed control over Korea. Her father worked in the sugar plantations of Hawaii briefly before taking his family to California. They shared the poverty-stricken existence endured by thousands of Asian immigrants in the early twentieth century, working as farm laborers, cooks, janitors, and miners. Lee recounts racism on the playground and the ravages of mercury mining on her father's health, but also entrepreneurial successes and hardships surmounted with grace.With a new foreword by David K. Yoo, this edition reintroduces Quiet Odyssey to readers interested in Asian American history and immigration studies. The volume includes thirty illustrations and a comprehensive introduction and bibliographic essay by respected scholar Sucheng Chan, who collaborated closely with Lee to edit the biography and ensure the work was true to the author's intended vision. This award-winning book provides a compelling firsthand account of early Korean American history and continues to be an essential work in Asian American studies.

Mary Paik Lee left her native country in 1905, traveling with her parents as a political refugee after Japan imposed control over Korea. Her father worked in the sugar plantations of Hawaii briefly before taking his family to California. They shared the poverty-stricken existence endured by thousands of Asian immigrants in the early twentieth century, working as farm laborers, cooks, janitors, and miners. Lee recounts racism on the playground and the ravages of mercury mining on her father's health, but also entrepreneurial successes and hardships surmounted with grace.With a new foreword by David K. Yoo, this edition reintroduces Quiet Odyssey to readers interested in Asian American history and immigration studies. The volume includes thirty illustrations and a comprehensive introduction and bibliographic essay by respected scholar Sucheng Chan, who collaborated closely with Lee to edit the biography and ensure the work was true to the author's intended vision. This award-winning book provides a compelling firsthand account of early Korean American history and continues to be an essential work in Asian American studies.

The place occupied by Japanese Americans within the annals of United States history often begins and ends with their cameo appearance as victims of incarceration after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In this provocative work, David K. Yoo broadens the scope of Japanese American history to examine how the second generation—the Nisei—shaped its identity and negotiated its place within American society. Tracing the emergence of a dynamic Nisei subculture, Yoo shows how the foundations laid during the 1920s and 1930s helped many Nisei adjust to the upheaval of the concentration camps. Schools, racial-ethnic churches, and the immigrant press served not merely as waystations to assimilation but as tools by which Nisei affirmed their identity in connection with both Japanese and American culture. The Nisei who came of age during World War II formed identities while negotiating complexities of race, gender, class, generation, economics, politics, and international relations. A thoughtful consideration of the gray area between accommodation and resistance, Growing Up Nisei reveals the struggles and humanity of a forgotten generation of Japanese Americans.