Overview

Cleveland, Ohio is not a location that most people associate with Asian American placemaking. However, on Cleveland’s East Side, multigenerational and panethnic Asian American residents and business owners are building community in the AsiaTown neighborhood. Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland foregrounds the importance of region in racial formation and redevelopment as it traces the history of racial segregation and neighborhood diversity. Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland challenges ideas about the invisibility of Asian Americans in the urban Midwest by linking the contemporary development of Cleveland’s “AsiaTown” to the multiple and fragmented histories of Cleveland’s Asian American communities from the 1940s to present day. Kinney’s sharp insights illustrate how region matters for Japanese Americans who resettled from concentration camps and Chinese Americans food purveyors, as well as the ways in which Asian American community leaders have had to fight for visibility and representation in city planning-even as the Cleveland Asian Festival is branded as a marquee “diversity” event for the city. Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland recognizes the vibrant Asian American community formations and belonging that have developed in seemingly unexpected spaces and places.   In the series Asian American History and Culture

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9781439924754

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Reviews

""Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland contributes to the growing scholarship of Asian American studies 'East of California'.... Kinney illustrates the myriad ways that Asian Clevelanders have kept place.... Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland puts Asian Clevelanders on the map and challenges the myth of Asian American absence in the interior United States.""--Ethnic Studies Review ""[A]n intriguing addition to scholarship that reconceptualizes the geographical boundaries of Asian America.... This is a useful text for students and academics interested in Asian American place as well as urban planning practitioners concerned with race, ethnicity, and community development. Summing Up: Recommended.""--Choice ""How have Asian Americans been placemakers in cities where there are not many Asian Americans, and why and how does it matter? Rebecca Jo Kinney answers these questions beautifully through a multilayered, nuanced, and relational study of Cleveland's Asian American history and present. Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland is an inspiring contribution to the study of Asian American histories and geographies in the Midwest. It will be an important resource for anyone interested in Asian American racial formation and placemaking outside of more well-known Chinatowns and ethnoburbs.""--Wendy Cheng, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, and author of The Changs Next Door to the Díazes: Remapping Race in Suburban California ""The dynamic expansion in the rapidly evolving field of Asian American Midwest studies in recent decades has been highlighted by Rebecca Jo Kinney's new book on the Asian American urban community in Cleveland. Her work provides another powerful narrative of new Asian American community formations in the heartland of the country through ethnic economic development and organized Asian American cultural celebrations. Highly recommended for anyone studying Asian American history; culture, race, and ethnicity; and urban development.""--Huping Ling, Truman State University, author of Chinese St. Louis: From Enclave to Cultural Community (Temple)

""[A] well-conceived, cutting-edge exploration of race, place, and urban development in the United States through Asian Americans in Cleveland.... Kinney presents a nuanced story of Asian Americans' struggle to create a place and sense of belonging in twentieth and twenty-first century Cleveland, a mid-sized postindustrial Rust Belt city with a relatively low Asian American population.... The book makes significant contributions to histories of Asian American urbanism.""--Indiana Magazine of History ""Kinney presents an interdisciplinary study of Cleveland's Asian American communities from the late 19th century to the present.... Placing Asian migration narratives in the history of Cleveland's development throughout the 20th century, ... Kinney rightfully confronts the uncritical emphasis on growth and decline narratives in urban upper Midwestern cities.""--Economic Development Quarterly ""[T]he book is more than a narrow study of Cleveland's Asian American enclave; it also is a story about the city of Cleveland, the Midwest region, and transnational Asian America.... [Kinney's] engagement with the social lives of on-the-ground Clevelanders three-dimensionalizes Asian Midwesterners giving voice to real stories. Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland inspires others to explore the richness of the scale of the subnational regional, especially the United States' middle, to tell underrepresented stories of racial-ethnic formations.""--Ethnic Studies Review ""Rich with historical and contemporary analysis, Kinney's portrait of the making of an ethnic enclave brings much-needed visibility to Asian Americans in the Midwest in general, and Cleveland in particular.... I highly recommend this book for many audiences. Most importantly, Asian Americanists, and particularly those who specialize in community, will undoubtedly find the whole book relevant and thought-provoking.""--Journal of Urban Affairs ""Kinney is bringing awareness to the Asian American experience in the Midwest, which has been under reported and under researched. Her book is a novel contribution to a wide range of scholarship, from community planning structures and urban sociology to racialization and ethnic studies.""--Ethnic and Racial Studies ""Kinney employs a rich and diverse methodological approach to sketch diasporic stories of Asian communities in Cleveland.... Overall, Kinney's study of Cleveland's AsiaTown provides a vital supplement to California-centric Asian American scholarship.... [T]his carefully crafted and deeply researched work nonetheless stands as a crucial reference for scholars of modern American history, Asian American studies, racial politics, urban development, and immigrant integration.""--Journal of Chinese Overseas ""Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland contributes to the growing scholarship of Asian American studies 'East of California'.... Kinney illustrates the myriad ways that Asian Clevelanders have kept place.... Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland puts Asian Clevelanders on the map and challenges the myth of Asian American absence in the interior United States.""--Ethnic Studies Review ""[A]n intriguing addition to scholarship that reconceptualizes the geographical boundaries of Asian America.... This is a useful text for students and academics interested in Asian American place as well as urban planning practitioners concerned with race, ethnicity, and community development. Summing Up: Recommended.""--Choice

Author Information

Rebecca Jo Kinney is an Associate Professor in the School of Cultural and Critical Studies at Bowling Green State University. She is the author of Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit as America’s Postindustrial Frontier, which won the 2018 Humanities Research Transdisciplinary Book Award as well as the Midwest Popular Culture and American Culture Association's Best Single Work.

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