Book Review – 1882 Foundation

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Review: Unassimilable by Bianca Mabute-Louie

How do Asians in the United States create a sense of belonging and liberation in a nation structured by white supremacy, colonialism, and anti-Black violence? Sociologist, educator, and activist Bianca Mabute-Louie explores this central question in her powerful memoir-manifesto, Unassimilable: An Asian Diasporic Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century. Combining her personal narratives and sociological inquiry, Mabute-Louie introduces “unassimilability” not as a deficit, but as a political and cultural stance—a refusal to conform to the demands of the American empire and a call to build alternative forms of belonging rooted in solidarity, justice, and care. She advocates for the term “Asian Diaspora” over “Asian American” to reflect the global and historical complexities of migration, and to shift away from U.S.-centric narratives of identity. Framed as both a memoir and a manifesto, the book interweaves Mabute-Louie’s life experiences with deep reflections on race, religion, gender, queerness, and imperialism, ultimately offering a bold and radical vision to build collective belonging alongside and among each other.

The structure of the book is chronological, tracing the author’s life from her childhood through adulthood as an individual from the Chinese/Asian diaspora who has lived in the United States. Each of the eight chapters explores a facet of diasporic life—assimilation, racialization, anti-Blackness, religion, gender, mental health, education, and migration—through both personal and collective lenses. In the first chapter, Mabute-Louie unpacks the historical concept and label of Asians as “unassimilable” and reclaims the term as a marker of resistance against assimilation in an anti-Black, colonial nation-state. The second chapter examines two common stereotypes of Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners and model minorities, and how these narratives restrict individual agency among the Asian Diaspora and reinforce white supremacy. Chapter three directly tackles anti-Blackness within Asian communities and calls for cross-racial solidarity in achieving collective liberation from empire and colonialism, encouraging the Asian Diaspora to see the struggles of other communities of color as inseparable from their own.

Subsequent chapters challenge dominant frameworks around religion, gender, and mental health. Chapter four critiques the role of Christianity in upholding colonial power, while also acknowledging its potential as a site for decolonial resistance and spiritual reimagination among Asian diasporic communities in the US. In the next chapter, Mabute-Louie highlights the experiences of queer, femme, and gender-nonconforming Asians in the Diaspora, questioning heteropatriarchal norms both within families and broader diasporic institutions. In chapter six, she later discusses intergenerational trauma, war, and silence within Asian immigrant households, reframing mental health not as an individual failure but as a collective opportunity for healing. The seventh chapter underscores the transformative potential of ethnic studies and storytelling as tools for empowerment and raising consciousness. In the final chapter, Mabute- Louie places Asian diasporic struggles within the broader global context of U.S. militarism, refugee resettlement, and settler colonialism, and critiques narratives that erase the violent histories behind migration and refugee resettlement.

Unassimilable is especially relevant to the Asian American community for its refusal to separate Asian American identity from colonialism and US empire and local complicity with white supremacy. Rather than simply celebrating cultural difference or assimilation, Mabute-Louie calls for a more radical transformation: one that requires deep interrogation of racial privilege, anti-Blackness, and settler complicity within the Asian Diaspora. Her concept of “relational liberation”—a framework grounded in truth-telling, mutual care, and intersectional
and interracial solidarity alongside one another —pushes readers to reimagine community beyond the bounds of nationalism, capitalism, or cultural pride. The book makes a significant contribution to Asian American scholarship and literature by expanding the scope of what Asian
identity can mean and what it must confront, offering an urgent intervention for a community often left to navigate harmful stereotypes in silence.

I found Unassimilable to be deeply moving, intellectually rigorous, and politically generative. Its balance of storytelling, academic insight, and actionable vision makes it a standout text in the growing field of Asian diasporic/Asian American studies. What struck me
most was Mabute-Louie’s vulnerability in sharing personal moments of contradiction, growth, and re-education—experiences that mirror the internal work many in the Asian Diaspora must do to unlearn dominant narratives and build coalitions across differences. At the same time, she never loses sight of the systemic forces that shape the experiences of the Asian Diaspora. This dual attention to individual and systemic realities gives the book its emotional and analytical power.

I highly recommend Unassimilable to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the complexities of Asian diasporic identity, particularly in relation to race, gender/sexuality, empire, and liberation. It is an especially important read for those in the Asian Diaspora
grappling with inherited traumas, discrimination, and the desire for collective belonging and healing. In a moment marked by increased discrimination and state oppression against marginalized communities, Mabute-Louie’s manifesto is both a refusal as well as an invitation:
to reject assimilation into violent systems and to build a new world together, one rooted in care, history, and possibility.

Written by Sraavya Chintalapati, 2025 Summer Intern, University of Texas, Austin ’24

by Ellen Feng

Review: Four Treasures of the Sky

Literature Corner Blog

Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang

If you think you already are familiar with the Chinese Exclusion Act and its consequences, this novel will make you realize hat there is so much more to learn about its history through voices that, unfortunately, will never be heard. This book falls into the category of historical fiction but it also carries elements of spirituality and lyricism that give it emotional weight.

The novel opens in 1882. Lin Daiyu, a young girl of 13, suddenly finds herself alone. Essentially orphaned – her parents have disappeared—she is sent away from her fishing village by her grandmother to the nearby city of Zhifu and told she has to make it on her own, but she will carry a new identity as a boy, Feng. It is a desperate move to save her life. The tone of the novel is set: survival hinges on her ability to learn skills she needs to survive while also learning about who she is and striving to be true to herself.

Her name, Lin Daiyu, is taken from a Chinese myth. In the legend, a boy falls in love with Lin Daiyu but she is a sickly girl and his family objects to their son’s love. On their wedding day, his family disguises another girl under heavy veils as Lin Daiyu. When Lin Daiyu learns of this deceit, she falls ill and dies. The boy, unaware of the switch, goes through with the marriage. Upon learning the truth, he goes mad. The real Lin Daiyu clearly does not like her name as it represents weakness to her. As the novel unfolds, a deeper meaning to the name and the legend is revealed.

One of the first skills Lin Diayu, now the boy Feng, learns is calligraphy. Master Wang, her teacher, explains: “Calligraphy is not only about the methods of writing but also about cultivating one’s character.” It is not just a practice but a philosophy. He asks his students “What makes good handwriting?” After listening to several good answers, Master Wang responds, “All true But you are forgetting the most important of them all: to be a good human. In calligraphy, you must have respect for what you are writing and who you are writing for. But above all, you must have respect for yourself.” We learn, along with Feng, that calligraphy is made up of the Four Treasures of the Study: the ink brush, the ink stick, the paper, and the ink stone and learning how to use them, to balance them properly. Throughout the book, Master Wang’s lessons return to Lin Daiyu. As she practices over and over to write the characters properly, their deeper meaning is revealed to her. The lessons prepare her to face the challenges that lie ahead.

One day while in the fish market, Feng (Lin Daiyu) is kidnapped. Thus begins a long, horrific journey to America where she ends up in a brothel in San Francisco. Today’s news brings us disturbing and tragic stories about child trafficking, but author Jenny Zhang’s description of the life through Lin Daiyu’s third identity, Peony, raises it to a different level of understanding.

All the characteristics of human interaction—friendship, trust, betrayal, courage, perseverance—are at play in the brothel. Peony manages an escape, and in the book’s final section , she once again takes on another identity, as a boy named Jacob, in Idaho. Master Wang said calligraphy is about the Four Treasures of the Study. He instructed his students to make the writing a reflection of you, your spirit, who you are. The author, Zhang, transforms the art of calligraphy into the title of the book, Four Treasures of the Sky. Lin Daiyu is similarly transformed throughout the book leaving the reader to ask what meaning are we to take away from her life and from this extraordinary book.

Review by Ting-Yi Oei, Education Director

by Ellen Feng

Review: Mamie Fights to Go to School

Literature Corner, Literature Corner Blog, 1882 Internship

Summary
Mamie Tape Fights to go to School, written by Traci Huahn and illustrated by Michelle Jing Chan, takes readers through the journey of how access to education became a right to children in the United States, including Chinese children. Based on a true story, Mamie Tape was on her way to her first day at Spring Valley Primary School in San Francisco. An all-white school in their neighborhood. When they arrived on the steps of the school, the principal flat out denied them, claiming that their “kind” was not welcome. A strange concept for Mamie, as she played with the children in her neighborhood just like anyone else, but wasn’t allowed to learn with them? Though the neighborhood did have a school for Chinese students at some point, it was in the basement of a church and shut down by the time Mamie was old enough to attend. It was an effort to prevent the Chinese community from receiving an education, and therefore making roots in the United States. Mamie’s community fought with and for her though. With neighbors to tutor and play with her, Mamie barely skipped a beat while her lawyers fought for her right to do those things in a classroom with her peers.. After back and forths with courts, the California
Supreme Court finally decided that all children, including those of Chinese descent, have the right to attend school. But even with the Court’s decision and a mandatory vaccination from a non-Chinese doctor, the principal still denied Mamie admission. The school board opened a
school for Chinese children (again) across town and above a grocery store; a stark contrast to Spring Valley Primary School. Though this was not the ideal Mamie and her family had in mind, it was a win for the community and would later set precedents for other cases fighting to end segregated schools. On April 13, 1885, The Chinese Primary School opened and Mamie and her little brother Frank became the
first to attend. This school would later be renamed to the Oriental School in 1906 to encompass
the education of Korean and Japanese children until the abolishment of racially segregated schools in California in 1947.

Significance
The decision to educate Mamie to any degree was a shock to both American and Chinese cultures. On the one hand, the school physically and legally restricted access to education. On the other, Chinese culture (especially at the time) did not generally believe that women should be
educated. The decision made in Tape v. Hurley (1885) was one of the earliest steps in the Civil Rights Movement and directly challenging the public education system. Just a few years prior, in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion act was signed into law under the Arthur administration. This policy prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers, restricted status to only those who were able to get certified by the Chinese government, and permanently prevented Chinese immigrants from becoming citizens. Tape v. Hurley would later be used in decisions for cases like Brown v. Board of Education (1954), another landmark case in working towards a desegregated society.

By Izzy Liu, Fall 2024 Intern

by Ellen Feng

Review: The Making of Asian America

Literature Corner Blog, 1882 Internship

“The Making of Asian America: A History” by Erika Lee offers an exploration of the Asian
American experience from the earliest migrations in the 16th century to contemporary times.
Lee, a professor at Harvard University, examines themes of migration, exclusion, adaptation, and
resistance, emphasizing the significant yet complex role of Asian Americans in U.S. history. The
narrative addresses historical policies like the Chinese Exclusion Act and connects them to
present-day issues of immigration and racial discrimination. Lee also discusses the impact of
major global events, such as World War II and the Cold War, on Asian Americans, and explores
the post-1965 transformations within the community. Through meticulous research and a
compelling narrative, Lee reconstructs Asian American history as an integral part of America’s
broader saga, challenging mainstream perceptions and advocating for a deeper understanding of
this diverse community.

By Jenny Gong, Fall 2024 Intern

by Ellen Feng

GRASS by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim — Review by Hannah Ku

Literature Corner Blog, 1882 Internship

Trigger Warning: This graphic novel depicts and describes instances of sexual violence.

Figure 1.1. Book Cover

Grass, illustrated by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim and translated by Janet Hong, is a harrowing graphic novel that narrates the stories of comfort women during World War II. [1] Specifically, Keum chronicles the story of Granny Lee Ok-Sun’s experience as a young child growing up during Japanese occupation and her eventual capture into sexual slavery at comfort stations.

Prior to the start of the Second World War, Granny Lee Ok-Sun recalls the hardships of living in Korea. During this time, her family were living off of meager food supplies and had no stable source of income, which left her parents unable to provide for their children. One day, her family decided to put her up for adoption to lessen their economic burden and in hopes that she would have more opportunities with another family. While Granny Lee Ok-Sun saw this as an opportunity to finally receive an education (a dream she had been yearning for), she did not realize the magnitude of what being adopted into another family meant. When she was given a new family, instead of receiving an education, the new family had lied to her and forced her to tirelessly work at their shop. After being tirelessly disobedient to her adoptive family, Granny Lee Ok-Sun was taken to a tavern to perform labor for the owners. She worked as a maid until the day she was abducted while walking back to the tavern.

Granny Lee Ok-Sun was put into a truck with other kidnapped girls her age where she later arrived at the East Yanji airport and moved into a comfort station. At the station, Granny Lee Ok-Sun recalls how the Japanese couple in charge attempted to give all the girls Japanese names in place of their Korean one. [2] One day after working, Granny Lee Ok-Sun painfully tells the tale of the first time a group of soldiers barged into their station. She details the shame and the painful experience she and others had to endure at these comfort stations. Moreover, Granny Lee Ok-Sun’s story reveals the various levels of violence that these women had to suffer through such as issues with venereal disease, unexpected pregnancies, beatings, and more.

Even as the war ended and Korea was officially “liberated,” Granny Lee Ok-Sun’s experience along with other comfort women proves contrary that liberation was for everyone. This narrative of liberation firstly ignores that many Koreans forcibly living in Japan had died as a direct result of the United States’ decision to use atomic weapons. Moreover, since they were Korean, they were unable to receive treatment for radiation. Additionally, this utilitarian framing of the allied powers “winning the war” ignores how many marginalized groups, comfort women in this case, were abandoned and left for dead.

Grass accomplishes the very difficult task of illustrating violence without sensationalizing or spectacularizing comfort women’s pain. While one may not picture a graphic novel as the ideal medium to relay tales of trauma, a picture truly speaks a thousand words.

To this day, there is still a lack of accountability from Japan about the crimes they committed during World War II. Granny Lee Ok-Sun along with other protestors continued to condemn Japan at public demonstrations in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Their stories will not, and should not, be ignored.

As Keum Suk Gendry-Kim eloquently puts it, “the ground that had been slumbering wakes, and the young grass pokes out from between the dead withered leaves. Grass springs up again, though knocked down by the wind, trampled and crushed under foot. Maybe it will brush against your legs and whisper a shy greeting. The winter is over, and the cold that seemed to last forever is thawing. Spring has finally come.”

Figure 2.1. Image from Grass

[1] The writers want to note that while they decide to use the phrase “comfort women,” they acknowledge that this phrase fails to capture the lived experiences of the women who experienced sexual slavery and violence.

[2] This incident is emblematic of the larger phenomenon of the Japanese campaign during the Second World War to erase Korean culture and language.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Hannah Ku is an intern at the 1882 Foundation. She is a master’s student studying Asian American history, public history methodology, and critical adoption studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in History, a minor in Chinese, and a certificate in East Asian Studies.

by 1882 Foundation

Palimpsest: Documents From a Korean Adoption by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom — Review by Hannah Ku

Literature Corner Blog, 1882 Internship

“Every adoption requires a family to be broken apart. Yet, you never hear about that grief”

Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom in Palimpsest: Documents From a Korean Adoption illustrates the process of investigating her adoption documents to better understand her origin story. Lisa is a Korean transnational adoptee, illustrator, cartoonist, graphic designer, and adoptee rights activist who beautifully captures the multi-faceted and difficult experience of being a transnational and transracial adoptee within this graphic novel. When becoming pregnant with her first child, Lisa began to question further about her origin story and she thought about her own mother’s experience carrying her. For example, Lisa wondered if her mother was similarly scared or if she was shocked.

Before diving into the crux of the graphic novel, she juxtaposes two definitions from the Cambridge Dictionary: palimpsest and adoption.

Palimpsest:

A very old text or document in which writing has been removed and covered or replaced by new writing.

Adoption:

The act of legally taking a child to be taken care of as your own.

There is a common conceit that the process of adoption produces a clean-slate for the child when they are adopted into a new family. In this sense, adoptees are completely erased of their previous history, kinship ties to their birth family and birth country. However, in Palimpsest, Lisa draws an entirely different narrative regarding the lived experience of adopted children. Contrary to this “clean-slate” narrative, Lisa reveals that the system of adoption is inherently structured by loss and grief.

Lisa describes this loss through her own experience of holding onto her birth culture and roots as she was growing up. While she tried to hold onto “being as Korean as she could,” she began to lose pride in her birth culture as she experienced racist remarks at school and in public. However, after the birth of her children, she decided to search again for her Korean roots. Lisa expresses the frustrating process of delving into her adoption documents since she was, “completely dependent upon other people’s goodwill, and [she’s] constantly trying to keep [her] hopes down to protect [her]self from disappointment.” Through this tiresome process, Lisa reveals the dark underside of the transnational adoption network. While normally we give so much legitimacy to “official” documents as “true” origin stories, Lisa uncovers a multitude of inconsistencies within these records. Moreover, she is stating the uneasy truth that no one actually wants to hear about supposedly benevolent adoption networks: the process of adoption is a legal and illegal form of economic exchange that relies upon the vulnerability of birth mothers and the exploitation of children.

As someone who was transnationally adopted, this text deeply resonated with me. I rarely find material about adoption written BY adoptees themselves. Oftentimes, it feels quite lonely to be an adoptee. Adoptees do not neatly fit into an identity category, which makes it hard to relate or identify to others who are not in our position. Our complicated feelings about our adoption are typically disregarded by others as inconsequential and at times ungrateful to our adoptive parents. As Lisa puts it, “Our yearnings for our original families and our pursuits for answers about severed biological ties are dismissed as only of interest to adoptees with mental issues, misfits, people who haven’t ‘successfully’ attached, people not capable of receiving the love offered to us.”

While Lisa is speaking from her own experience as a Korean adoptee and about the Korean adoption process, her work is important and so incredibly meaningful to adoptees everywhere. Not every adoptee experiences the same journey, but her description made me feel less alone in my struggle of reckoning with my past.

____________________________________________________________________________________

by 1882 Foundation

Tag Archive for: Book Review

Review: Unassimilable by Bianca Mabute-Louie

Review: Four Treasures of the Sky

Review: Mamie Fights to Go to School

Review: The Making of Asian America

GRASS by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim — Review by Hannah Ku

Palimpsest: Documents From a Korean Adoption by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom — Review by Hannah Ku

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