ABSTRACT
Asian American history arose to critique dominant narratives of U.S. history. It bound the task of filling in gaps in U.S. historiography to interrogating values that shaped an elite Eurocentric masculinist approach to the study of past events, rendering visible certain people and ideas and others to the margins. Given this genealogy, which privileges historical writings published after the institutionalization of Ethnic Studies following the 1968 student strike at San Francisco State College, Asian American history not only shifted who could be the nation’s storytellers, but also emerged as a composite of narratives that aimed to unsettle the various power structures at work to make minor people and perspectives even as it often replicated the values that it challenged.
