"The Asian Pacific American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts is aimed at a new audience - the new multicultural classroom - and is the first reference work of its kind dedicated to explaining in detail the diverse history of Asian Pacific American culture." "This collection of 63 original articles, written by expert contributors renowned in their specialties, has been designed to support those students, teachers, and librarians who may be unfamiliar with Asian Pacific American culture but need accessible, in-depth information on the topics that will unlock the work of contemporary Asian Pacific American writers and artists - now, and for years to come." "The Asian Pacific American Heritage is a valuable source of information for anyone examining the cultural, intellectual, and social influence of Asian Pacific Americans."--Jacket.

Part IFundamentals. -- Reading Asian characters in English ; -- Characters: the Asian ideogram systems ; -- The "model minority" discourse -- Part II The Family and the Self. -- Confucius and the Asian American family ; -- My grandfather's concubines ; -- Japanese American life in the Twentieth century ; -- The Nisei go to war ; -- Being Nisei ; -- First-generation memories ; -- Filipino American values ; -- Korean American one-point-five ; -- The lizard hunter -- Part III Roots, Traditions, and Asian Pacific Life: The Old Country and Its Cultural Legacy. -- Food and ethnic identity ; -- Chinese food ; -- Japanese food ; -- Filipino food ; -- Korean food ; -- Vietnamese food ; -- Southeast Asian food ; -- Tea ; -- Fengshui, Chinese medicine, and correlative thinking ; -- Lunar new year, the Moon lady, and the Moon festival ; -- Obon season in Little Tokyo ; -- Filipinos and religion ; -- Maoism and surviving the great proletarian cultural revolution -- Part IV Asian Pacific Culture: Diaspora. -- The Chinese diaspora ; -- The arrival of the Asians in California ; -- The early history of Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and Filipinos in America ; -- Chinatown, 1899 -- Part V Literature. -- Dialect, standard, and slang ; -- Dialect literature in America ; -- Roots ; -- Roots ; -- The beginnings of Chinese literature in America ; -- D.T. Suzuki and the creation of Japanese American Zen ; -- Asian American literary pioneers ; -- Asian American literature ; -- First-generation writings ; -- Asian American autobiographical tradition ; -- Frank Chin ; -- Maxine Hong Kingston ; -- A reader's guide to Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club ; -- David Henry Hwang ; -- A reader's guide to Cebu and Dark Blue Suit based on interviews with its author, Peter Bacho ; -- Jessica Hagedorn ; -- Lawson Fusao Inada ; -- Garret Hongo ; -- The literature of Korean America ; -- The Korean American novel ; -- Discovering Korean American literature ; -- Clay Walls ; -- Cathy Song and the Korean American experience in poetry -- Part VI The arts. -- Chinese opera ; -- Bernardo Bertolucci and the westernization of The Last Emperor ; -- A viewer's guide to Wayne Wang's Dim Sum ; -- Asian American visual arts ; -- Story cloths ; -- Toi Hoang ; -- First-generation painting.