As part of this blog’s mission of making academic research and data more easily accessible, understandable, and applicable to a wider audience and to practical, everyday social issues, I highlight new sociological books about Asian Americans and other racial/ethnic groups as I hear about them. As always, please remember that I highlight them for informational purposes only and do not necessarily endorse their entire content or arguments.

Hollywood Faith: Holiness, Prosperity, and Ambition in a Los Angeles Church, by Gerardo Marti (Rutgers University Press)

In Christianity, as with most religions, attaining holiness and a higher spirituality while simultaneously pursuing worldly ideals such as fame and fortune is nearly impossible. So, how do people pursuing careers in Hollywood’s entertainment industry maintain their religious devotion without sacrificing their career goals?

For some, the answer lies just two miles south of the historic center of Hollywood, California, at the Oasis Christian Center. In “Hollywood Faith”, Gerardo Marti shows how a multiracial evangelical congregation of 2,000 people accommodates itself to the entertainment industry and draws in many striving to succeed in this harsh and irreverent business. Oasis strategically sanctifies ambition and negotiates social change by promoting a new religious identity as “champion of life” – an identity that provides people who face difficult career choices and failed opportunities a sense of empowerment and endurance.

The first book to provide an in-depth look at religion among the “creative class.” “Hollywood Faith” will fascinate those interested in the modern evangelical movement and anyone who wants to understand how religion adapts to social change.

As I and many other scholars have written, Asian Americans are frequently portrayed as the “model minority” — a group of Americans who have worked to overcome difficulties in our way in order to achieve socioeconomic success, who have quietly persevered to get ahead in American society rather than resorting to political confrontation, and therefore, stand as examples for other racial Read More →

Here are some more announcements and links out that have come my way relating to Asians or Asian Americans. As always, links to other sites are provided for informational purposes and do not necessarily imply an endorsement of their contents:

UCLA Releases First High School Textbook on Asian Americans: Untold Civil Rights Stories

Online Bookstore: www.aasc.ucla.edu/aascpress/comersus/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=81
Price: $20 with educational discounts of 25-100 Read More →

In a recent post titled “The Degrees of Immigrant Bashing,” I described various ways in which the recession has led to increased anti-immigrant hostility, leading to blatantly offensive comments from public officials, acts of violence and hate crimes, and misguided federal regulations. As a follow up, blogger Michelle Waslin at Immigration Impact writes that, perhaps ironically, the recession seems to Read More →

You might be interested to read the following posts from June of years past:

2008: Disneyland: A Metaphor for Fitting InA family outing to Disneyland highlights some of the issues that Asian Americans face when it comes to whether or not we’re part of the American mainstream.
2007: Eating Disorders Among Asian AmericansExamining the pressures faced by Asian American women to look ‘western’ Read More →

It’s a well known and documented fact that in almost all Asian cultures, boys are systematically valued more than girls. Based on centuries of institutionalized patriarchy and traditional cultural practices, most Asian families would rather have children who are boys than girls. This gender bias is one of the reasons why an overwhelming majority of children given up for Read More →

Racial hatred and the extremist ideas behind White supremacy are not new. As my friend and fellow sociologist Rory McVeigh writes in his new book The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements and National Politics, hate groups come in all forms, sizes, and levels of formal organization and have played a role in American race relations for over Read More →

Here are some more links out that have come my way relating to Asians or Asian Americans. As always, links to other sites are provided for informational purposes and do not necessarily imply an endorsement of their contents:

Photographic Exhibition: commUNITY

In celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, photographer William L. Snyder and the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette are collaborating Read More →

Following up on my earlier post about the recent publication of former Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang’s memoirs, this week marks the 20th anniversary of the end of student protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China.

As history records it, for two months leading up to this week, thousands of young Chinese college students and their supporters camped out in Tiananmen Read More →

As many Asian American bloggers have been reporting around the internet and as the University of California, Berkeley has just confirmed, Professor Ronald Takaki has passed away at the age of 70:

Ronald Takaki, a professor emeritus of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and prolific scholar of U.S. race relations who taught UC’s first black history course, died at Read More →

As the Census Bureau ramps up its efforts toward the 2010 census, they’ve just released a summary sheet from their recently published State and County report that highlights some interesting geographic characteristics of the racial/ethnic minority population in the U.S.:

Four states were majority-minority in 2008: Hawaii (75%), New Mexico (58%), California (58%) and Texas (53%). The District of Columbia was 67% Read More →

As part of this blog’s mission of making academic research and data more easily accessible, understandable, and applicable to a wider audience and to practical, everyday social issues, I highlight new sociological books about Asians/Asian Americans and other racial/ethnic groups as I hear about them. As always, please remember that I highlight them for informational purposes only and do not Read More →