Japanese American Millennials: Rethinking Generation, Community, and Diversity, Michael Omi (ed), Dana Y Nakano (ed), and Jeffrey T Yamashita (ed) (Temple University Press, November 2019)
Japanese American Millennials: Rethinking Generation, Community, and Diversity, Michael Omi (ed), Dana Y Nakano (ed), and Jeffrey T Yamashita (ed) (Temple University Press, November 2019)

Whereas most scholarship on Japanese Americans looks at historical case studies or the 1.5 generation assimilating, this pioneering anthology, Japanese American Millennials: Rethinking Generation, Community, and Diversity, captures the experiences, perspectives, and aspirations of Asian Americans born between 1980 and 2000. The editors and contributors present multiple perspectives on who Japanese Americans are, how they think about notions of community and culture, and how they engage and negotiate multiple social identities.

An American Bum in China, Tom Carter (Camphor Press, September 2019)
An American Bum in China, Tom Carter (Camphor Press, September 2019)

An American Bum in China: Featuring the bumblingly brilliant escapades of expatriate Matthew Evans is the remarkable but true story of an Iowan misfit. At the age of twenty-one, cancer survivor Evans flees his Mississippi River hometown of Muscatine and heads to China in pursuit of love. He ends up destitute, deported, working as a professor at a prestigious university, homeless, imprisoned, and an accidental participant in the 2014 Hong Kong protests.

The Rise and Fall of America's Concentration Camp Law: Civil Liberties Debates from the Internment to McCarthyism and the Radical 1960s, Masumi Izumi (Temple University Press, September 2019)
The Rise and Fall of America’s Concentration Camp Law: Civil Liberties Debates from the Internment to McCarthyism and the Radical 1960s, Masumi Izumi (Temple University Press, September 2019)

The Emergency Detention Act, Title II of the Internal Security Act of 1950, is the only law in American history to legalize preventive detention. It restricted the freedom of a certain individual or a group of individuals based on actions that may be taken that would threaten the security of a nation or of a particular area. Yet the Act was never enforced before it was repealed in 1971.

The Hell Screens, Alvin Lu (Camphor Press, August 2019)
The Hell Screens, Alvin Lu (Camphor Press, August 2019)

Cheng-Ming, a Taiwanese American, rummages through the used-book stalls and market bins of Taipei. His object is no ordinary one; he’s searching obsessively for accounts of ghosts and spirits, suicides and murders in a city plagued by a rapist-killer and less tangible forces. Cheng-Ming is an outsider trying to unmask both the fugitive criminal and the otherworld of spiritual forces that are inexorably taking control of the city.

The Only Man Dressing for Dinner: Beijing 1900, Giuseppe Salvago Raggi, Angelo Paratico (trans, intro) (Gingko, August 2019)
The Only Man Dressing for Dinner: Beijing 1900, Giuseppe Salvago Raggi, Angelo Paratico (trans, intro) (Gingko, August 2019)

A translation from Italian of the memoirs of Giuseppe Salvago Raggi, minister of Italy in Beijing from 1898 until 1902. In 1900, Raggi, his wife and child, lived through the 55 days of the Siege of the Legations. This book contains the section of memoirs related to his service in China, just before and after the famous Siege.

Wild Boar in the Cane Field: A Novel, Anniqua Rana (She Writes Press, September 2019)
Wild Boar in the Cane Field: A Novel, Anniqua Rana (She Writes Press, September 2019)

Wild Boar in the Cane field introduces a world of magic realism, in which a fly-covered baby girl, Tara, is found and raised by two mothers in a community rife with rituals and superstition. As she grows, Tara pursues acceptance at all costs. Saffiya, her adoptive mother, and Bhaggan, Saffiya’s maidservant, are victims of the men in their community, and the two women, in turn, struggle and live short but complicated lives. The only way for the villagers to find solace is through the rituals of ancient belief systems.

The Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang: Republican-Era Martial Arts Fiction, John Christopher Hamm (Columbia University Press, August 2019)
The Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang: Republican-Era Martial Arts Fiction, John Christopher Hamm (Columbia University Press, August 2019)

Xiang Kairan, who wrote under the pen name “the Unworthy Scholar from Pingjiang,” is remembered as the father of modern Chinese martial arts fiction, one of the most distinctive forms of twentieth-century Chinese culture and the inspiration for China’s globally popular martial arts cinema. In this book, John Christopher Hamm shows how Xiang Kairan’s work and career offer a new lens on the transformations of fiction and popular culture in early-twentieth-century China.

The Power of Print in Modern China: Intellectuals and Industrial Publishing from the End of Empire to Maoist State Socialism, Robert Culp (Columbia University Press, May 2019)
The Power of Print in Modern China: Intellectuals and Industrial Publishing from the End of Empire to Maoist State Socialism, Robert Culp (Columbia University Press, May 2019)

Amid early twentieth-century China’s epochal shifts, a vital and prolific commercial publishing industry emerged. Recruiting late Qing literati, foreign-trained academics, and recent graduates of the modernized school system to work as authors and editors, publishers produced textbooks, reference books, book series, and reprints of classical texts in large quantities at a significant profit. Work for major publishers provided a living to many Chinese intellectuals and offered them a platform to transform Chinese cultural life.