Asian American Sporting Cultures

by Stanley I. Thangaraj (Editor), Constancio Arnaldo, Jr. (Editor), Christina B. Chin (Editor), J. Jack Halberstam (Foreword by), Lisa Lowe (Afterword)

Overview

Delves into the long history of Asian American sporting cultures, considering how identities and communities are negotiated on sporting fields

Through a close examination of Asian American sporting cultures ranging from boxing and basketball to spelling bees and wrestling, the contributors reveal the intimate connection between sport and identity formation. Sport plays a special role in the processes of citizen-making and of the policing of national and diasporic bodies. It is thus one key area in which Asian American stereotypes may be challenged, negotiated, and destroyed as athletic performances create multiple opportunities for claiming American identities.

This volume incorporates work on Pacific Islander, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Americans as well as East Asian Americans, and explores how sports are gendered, including examinations of Asian American men’s attempts to claim masculinity through sporting cultures as well as the “Orientalism” evident in discussions of mixed martial arts as practiced by Asian American female fighters. This American story illuminates how marginalized communities perform their American-ness through co-ethnic and co-racial sporting spaces.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479884698
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	04/05/2016
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Stanley I. Thangaraj is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at City College of New York.

Constancio R. Arnaldo, Jr. is Visiting Assistant Professor of Asian/Asian American Studies at Miami University, Ohio.

Christina B. Chin is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the California State University, Fullerton.

J. Jack Halberstam is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Halberstam is the author of In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, Female Masculinity and co-author with Del LaGrace Volcano of The Drag King Book.

Lisa Lowe is Professor of English and American Studies at Tufts University, and a member of the consortium of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora. She is the author of Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics, and The Intimacies of Four Continents.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Success, Failure, and Everything in Between J. Jack Halberstam vii

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: You Play Sports? Asian American Sporting Matters Stanley I. Thangaraj Constancio R. Arnaldo, Jr. Christina B. Chin 1

Part I Asian American Sports in Historical Context

1 From Perpetual Foreigner to Pacific Rim Entrepreneur: The U.S. Military, Asian Americans, and the Circuitous Path of Sport Ryan Reft 23

2 Reflections on Sport Spectatorship and Immigrant Life Shalini Shankar 53

Part II Asian American Sporting Celebrities

3 Everybody Loves an Underdog: Learning from Linsanity Oliver Wang 75

4 Manny "Pac-Man" Pacquiao, the Transnational Fist, and the Southern California Ringside Community Constancio R. Arnaldo, Jr. 102

Part III Complicating "Model Minority" Myths, Orientalism, and Gendered Stereotypes

5 Indian Americans and the "Brain Sport" of Spelling Bees Pawan Dhingra 127

6 Mixed Martial Arts, Caged Orientalism, and Female Asian American Bodies Jessica W. Chin David L. Andrews 152

7 The Continued Legacy of Japanese American Youth Basketball Leagues Christina B. Chin 180

Part IV Refugees, Pacific Islanders, and Sport

8 Hmong Youth, American Football, and the Cultural Politics of Ethnic Sports Tournaments Chia Youyee Vang 199

9 Lin, Te'b, and Asian American Masculinities in Sporting Flux David Leonard 221

Afterword: "Competing against Type" Lisa Lowe 247

About the Contributors 253

Index 257

Editorial Reviews

"A wonderful read for and about sportss observers, participants, scholars, and fans. With a wide variety of approaches ranging from media analysis to autoethnography, this collection of smart and accessible essays provides a great model for thinking about sportsand through sports about ethnicity, race, and gender in specific local, transnational, and historical contexts."

Erica Rand

"Sports is one of the most important arenas of socialization and popular culture, and Asian Americans have often been seen as having a disjunctive or non-existent relationship to it. This sui generis collection shows in unexpected and startling ways how a long but under-examined history of Asian American sporting culturefrom participation and competition to spectatorship and fandomfundamentally reshapes allegories of national belonging and race at the heart of athletics."

David L. Eng

"A wonderful read for and about sports’s observers, participants, scholars, and fans. With a wide variety of approaches ranging from media analysis to autoethnography, this collection of smart and accessible essays provides a great model for thinking about sports—and through sports about ethnicity, race, and gender in specific local, transnational, and historical contexts."-Erica Rand,author of Red Nails, Black Skates: Gender, Cash, and Pleasure On and Off the Ice

"Sports is one of the most important arenas of socialization and popular culture, and Asian Americans have often been seen as having a disjunctive or non-existent relationship to it. This sui generis collection shows in unexpected and startling ways how a long but under-examined history of Asian American sporting culture—from participation and competition to spectatorship and fandom—fundamentally reshapes allegories of national belonging and race at the heart of athletics."-David L. Eng,University of Pennsylvania

From the Publisher