Asia, Asian America, and American Social Movements

FAIN: FT-50025-03

Judy T. Wu
Ohio State University (Columbus, OH 43210-1349)

This book-length study examines how Asian revolutionaries, political ideologies, and cultural practices inspired activism in the United States from the mid-1950's through the 1970's. Although Asia permeated American radical culture during this era, no study has systematically examined how the "East" shaped movements in the "West." This project proposes the concept of radical orientalism to understand how American activists of Asian and non-Asian descent turned to Asia as a source for alternative religious, cultural, and political values. In doing so, they continued a practice of cultivating ideas and fantasies about the East as the contrasting image of the West in order to imagine new identities for themselves and their communities