By Justine Trinh
During the holidays last year, I received a holiday book catalog from my local bookstore in Pullman, Washington. I decided to thumb through it to see if there were any books I wanted to add to my ever-growing TBR list. That was when I saw Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now, and I immediately added it to the list. Unfortunately, at the time, I could not afford to buy it outright, so it went on the back burner. I kept telling myself I would borrow it from the library eventually, but as it generally happens, life got in the way, and I had a million other things to read, so I forgot about it. Fast forward six months later during a visit to the used library bookstore, I saw the very same book in the corner for three dollars and snatched it up. This should not have been a back burner book.
Rise is a gorgeous book that was written as a response to the racist attacks following the Covid-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, there seemed to be an uptick of representation of Asian Americans, but the pandemic shows that success and progress can be erased overnight, and it is important to preserve our history so we and others do not forget how we got here. As a result, Rise provides an in-depth overview that encompasses moments from Asian American popular culture and history starting before the 1990s until the present day. Through a collection of retrospective interviews, relatable infographics (such as the layout of a boba shop and a “Appreciation or Appropriation?” flowchart), and comic strips, the authors, Jeff Yang, Phil Yu, and Philip Wang, authors and popular figures in Asian American pop culture themselves, document and describe key moments of the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s to understand and explain how Asian Americans are understood socio-politically today.
Yang, Yu, and Wang have taken on an impossible task—there is no way Rise can cover every single moment of Asian American history within its 496 pages. There are bound to be some things they inevitably missed, yet despite this, the book is a great overview, both accessible and fun. As someone who has studied Asian American studies in a formal college setting, I can attest that sometimes academia can be dense and a slog to get through, and while Rise does not get into the theoretical framework, it still does a great job of giving its readers a thorough rundown of Asian America all while making it fun and interactive. I enjoyed pulling out the pages and seeing the colorful graphics. For every decade, I looked forward to the Asian American yearbook and the retrospectives. I made a game of trying to name the faces that decorated the cover, as it combats the idea that all Asians look alike. Although there were things I already learned through a formal classroom setting, I found myself flipping page after page, wanting to know more.
The past informs our present, and as much as Rise is a celebration of how far we have come as Asian Americans, it also is a reminder that we would not be where we are at now without the injustices that those before us had to experience and overcome, and how we still are not done yet. When I was a kid, there was not much Asian American representation, and Mulan was considered an insult (the boys at my elementary school used to call any girl who cut their hair short or who was not feminine enough to reinforce heteronormative patriarchy Mulan). The only “Asian” books at my school library were Pearl S. Buck’s Fairy Tales from the Orient and Michelle Kwan’s Heart of a Champion. Now when I enter Barnes and Noble, I am inundated by the number of books by Asian American authors, and I cannot keep up. And I now know that Mulan is cool as shit. As the book synopsis states, “Rise is a love letter to and for Asian Americans,” and I can feel how much effort and love was put into it. The book does not shy away from hard topics, making it a must have on everyone’s book list.
Justine Trinh is an English literature Ph.D. student at Washington State University. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with B.A.s in Asian American studies and classical civilizations and a B.S. in mathematics. She then went on to earn her M.A. in Asian American studies, making her the first student to graduate from UCI Asian American Studies’ 4+1 B.A./M.A. program. Her research interests include Asian American literature, critical refugee studies, family and trauma, and forced departure and disownment.