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This probing account shines a new light on the problem of anti-Asian violence and inspires us to build lasting solidarity.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, racist demagoguery fomented a campaign of terror against Asian Americans. But these attacks were part of a much longer pattern that made anti-Asian racism integral to the outbreak of white supremacist, misogynist, and colonial violence across 175 years of U.S. history. Written in the radical spirit of Howard Zinn, American Peril represents the culmination of thirty-five years of study and activism by award-winning scholar Scott Kurashige.
From the lynching of Asian immigrants during the exclusion era to the ongoing slaughter of Asian civilians by the U.S. military, the book connects domestic and global events that have been erased from the official record. Going beyond victimhood, Kurashige traces the rise of Asian American community protest and activism in response to the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin and other overlooked tragedies. While many have worked to legislate and prosecute hate crimes, Kurashige argues that hope lies in grassroots activism for multiracial solidarity.
"We all owe a debt of gratitude to Scott Kurashige for assembling these truths about our history. Our failure to face the truth of anti-Asian racism is part of what renders us unsafe and our democracy vulnerable. At the same time, facing this history will help unlock the opportunity—for all of us—that lies in our multiracial future."—Ai-jen Poo, president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and author of The Age of Dignity
"Asian Americans face a two-headed monster when enduring anti-Asian violence: the act itself, and the erasure caused when we are told the act was not racially motivated. Respected scholar and community activist Scott Kurashige has done the vital and until now thankless work of placing all of this into a historical framework, backed by exhaustive research and the wisdom of a community servant. Forget the jargon, forget the ennui: this book is blood, guts, sweat, and tears. Our bodies. Our minds. Our refusal to be erased. In short, this history, this erasure, and this fight against it all, is as part of American history as anything else. Good god, I need this book to exist. I hope the rest of the world feels that way about it, too."—Bao Phi, poetry slam champion and author of Sông I Sing and A Different Pond
"While the Covid-19 lockdown era saw a surge in xenophobic hostility, harassment, and physical attacks on Asians in the United States, anti-Asian sentiment—and the violence that all too often springs up in its wake—is neither new nor fleeting. As Kurashige shows in this urgent and necessary book, it's a shockingly regular response by nativist Americans toward any internal or external perceived threat, from trade competition to supply chain breakdowns; loss of jobs to excessive foreign investment; rising crime, falling birthrates, inflation, recession, and, of course, both cold and hot war. Kurashige's career and bold advocacy make him the ideal voice to tell this story. American Peril will become a mainstay in classrooms and libraries, and on the shelves and nightstands of any who want to understand the pernicious role that white supremacy has played in shaping what it means to be American: carving off, cutting out, excluding and sometimes executing those who it judges do not belong in this nation."—Jeff Yang, author of The Golden Screen and coauthor of New York Times bestseller Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now
"This is a must-read book to understand the multifaceted history of anti-Asian violence not only as individual attacks but through the context of war, militarism, imperialism, capitalist exploitation, and the postindustrial urban crisis. Through captivating storytelling, Kurashige uses his decades of knowledge as scholar and activist to resist the violence of erasure of Asian American activism and of anti-Asian racism itself.”—Diane C. Fujino, author of Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama