Jeff Yang (no relation — but still an important member of the Yangvolution of America) writes about author William F. Wu’s collection of Asian images in American comics:
It covers 44 years during which the U.S. fought major wars in the Pacific, in Korea and in Vietnam; committed the tragic injustice of the Japanese American internment, and carried out history’s only atomic bombingof human targets in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; engaged in political rivalry with China and economic competition with Japan; and, as restrictive policies were eliminated and immigration skyrocketed, experienced the dramatic emergence and rise of its own domestic Asian population.
This wasn’t just one of the most critical and turbulent periods in our nation’s history — it was the four-decade period that forged Asian America as we know it, and set in place many of the lenses through which America continues to perceive us today.
The collection is currently on display at New York University’s Fales Library. Full article here.
