ABSTRACT
Although it is one of the least-known social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the Asian American movement drew upon some of the most powerful currents of the era and had a wide-ranging impact on the racial and political landscape of Asian America and, more generally, the United States. This book situates the Asian American movement within the milieu of racial and anti-war activism of the 1960s and 1970s writ large. It shows how the Asian American movement created a multiethnic alliance comprising Asians of all ethnicities by drawing on the discourses and ideologies of the Black Power and anti-war movements in the United States, as well as decolonization movements around the globe. Most importantly, it argues that the Asian American movement was fundamentally committed to the ideologies of interracialism and internationalism. In other words, the Asian American movement sought to achieve radical social change by building interracial coalitions and transnational solidarities. Coalitional politics was not simply a by-product or late addition to the movement, but rather was foundational to its understanding of the United States as a capitalistic and imperialistic system that exploited people of color both within and outside its borders.
