Becoming Asian American: Second-Generation Chinese and Korean American Identities (review)

In Becoming Asian American, Kibria's study explores the racial and ethnic identity development of 64 middle-class, college-educated Chinese and Korean Americans. Although limited in its coverage of other Asian American ethnicities and a broad spectrum of others outside the middle class, the book is important in its qualitative investigation of ethnic and racial identity development among a group that is constantly marked as an American "other," a foreigner, or alien. I consider the book important as the next generation of Asian American studies texts examining successive generations of Asian ethnic groups other than Japanese Americans.