Abstract
Upon my arrival in Los Angeles in 2022, my friends took me to Rowland Heights for Chinese food. The Chinese food was great—more authentic than that in many other U.S. cities. However, what truly captured my attention was the collage of the Chinese contemporary stores in the Western suburban fabric. This collage is different from Flushing in New York City, which resembled a third-tier Chinese contemporary city. Rowland Heights was more low-density, country-like, and language-inclusive than most traditional Chinatowns in Western countries. In light of these observations, a series of inquiries naturally arose for me: What social and political dynamics created and shaped this unique urban form? What factors propelled Asian suburbanites to uphold the suburban fabric amidst substantial demographic shifts? How did they maintain Asian cultural expressions in daily life in Los Angeles suburbs?
In Resisting Change in Suburbia—Asian Immigrants and Frontier Nostalgia in LA, James Zarsadiaz addresses the questions above. Zarsadiaz provides a comprehensive and insightful view in revivificating the history of how Asian Americans, as a so-called “model minority,” adapted to Western civic life, encountered racial prejudice and cultural differences, but nonviolently and sophisticatedly shifted the power dynamic to maintain ethnic customs and join the American family at the same time. In particular, Zarsadiaz underscores the significance of class dynamics in shaping the suburban trajectory of Asian Americans in the East San Gabriel Valley (East Valley) of Greater Los Angeles.
The book unfolds in six chronologically organized chapters that focus in on the particular experience of the East Valley’s Asian American communities. Chapter 1 explains the concept and historical roots of nostalgia and idyllic “country living”—a phrase that the author used in the book to describe suburban life. “Country living,” or “rural urbanism,” represents a western and particularly American housing and lifestyle paradigm preferred by middle-class white settler society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and its legacy is still felt in the racial and cultural dynamics of the East Valley today. Chapter 2 explores the motivations and experiences of the people who chose to settle in the suburban East Valley in the middle to late twentieth century. It explains why Asian immigrants were attracted to settling here and the struggles they faced in building their lives in a Euro-American paradigm of living. Chapter 3 focuses on how Asian immigrants impacted the built environment of the East Valley. It shows the seesaw battle between maintaining ethnic practices and customs and complying with the local norms of suburban living in daily life and business. Chapter 4 dissects how Asian suburbanites’ cultural perspective influenced local public education and caused controversies among other suburbanites, and how Asian Americans came to influence and participate in East Valley politics through their affluence. Chapter 5 examines the “Slow Growth” movement, which aimed at preserving “country living” but also to minimize the presence and influence of Asian immigrants. Expanding upon the previous chapter, Chapter 6 discusses (anti-)cityhood and incorporation which, along with the “Slow Growth” movement, Zarsadiaz argues to perpetuate racial division and prevent “Asianization.” Finally, the book wraps up with an Epilogue that revisits the aspiration that everyone, in spite of differences and individual preferences, can equally and freely enjoy suburban life.
Oral histories, as a qualitative research method suited to the study of an under-studied topic, are central to the methodology. Zarsadiaz chose to conduct interviews of 50 local people to serve as his primary sources. These oral histories served as a potent resource, effectively filling the gap in documentation and literature on the subject, providing the details and nuances of information and sentiments not covered by conventional media, and amplifying the voice of marginalized people, in this case, Asian Americans. The oral histories were provided by residents of different races and ethnicities in the East Valley, including US-born whites, foreign-born Asians of different ethnicities, and Black and Latino residents. With the racially and ethnically inclusive coverage of residents and the large number of interviews, the book provides a multi-perspective, balanced, and less-biased view of the history of Asian Americans’ suburbanization in the East Valley. In addition, Zarsadiaz took the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the respondents into consideration, which helped him reach a more thorough and representative sample and analyze the oral histories with an understanding of biases. Moreover, the ethnicity-inclusive recruitment strategy increases the generalizability of the book. Previous literature mainly focused on Chinese Americans, the biggest population group in Los Angeles suburbs. 1 Zarsadiaz includes other ethnicities such as Koreans and Filipinos in the research, which increases the research focus from one ethnicity to more ethnicities to better represent Asian Americans in general.
I found the book to be inclusive, exploratory, enlightening, rigorous, and pellucid. The book has several strengths. First, with the inclusive coverage of residents, the book showcases different inter- and intra-racial perspectives. Inter-racially, it not only presents Asian Americans’ struggles to maintain their ethnic customs while adjusting the Euro-American ideal of “country living,” but also shows the White local residents’ concerns and unfamiliarity with the built environment changes brought by cultural differences. Intra-racially, some Asian Americans were skeptical of “country living” and seeking change, while other Asian Americans were in favor of assimilation and valued compliance with “country living” norms as a symbol of success and fitting in in the U.S. The multi-perspective illustration of Asian Americans’ suburbanization yields a more comprehensive, impartial, and therefore, compelling narrative.
Second, and in contrast with geographers, sociologists, and economists’ focuses on politics, racial dynamics, spatial features, or (global) economics, 2 Zarsadiaz examined Asian Americans’ suburbanization from the perspective of class, through the angle of history and spatial planning. Zarsadiaz discusses the role of class in Asian American suburbanization in a more critical and dialectical way. On the one hand, Asian Americans gained more power and control from their class position in comparison to other American minorities; on the other hand, they were still facing racial, political, and cultural challenges in suburbanizing as race minorities. Class is the entry point for examining the complex process and history of Asian American’ suburbanization, but his narrative is also augmented by the intertwining factors of race and culture to offer a thorough and rigorous exploration of this process and history.
Third, Zarsadiaz employs everyday elements of daily life as examples and anchors to depict and effectively elucidate the academic and intricate concepts, theories, and processes of urban development, economic change, and politics. Bringing together academic perspectives with everyday places, such as 99 Ranch supermarket and Hsi Lai Temple, fosters resonance among both scholars and readers from diverse backgrounds. With the close-to-life examples, Zarsadiaz makes complex concepts fun and easy to follow.
Finally, Zarsadiaz situates the East Valley’s planning controversies in divergent cultural inclinations, rather than merely conflicts or prejudices. Zarsadiaz’s familiarity with Asian cultures and mainstream American culture equips him to speak for each culture and tell readers these cultures’ stories and preferences. The tone of the book is objective, moderate, and neutral, while remaining precise and to the point. The book skillfully sidesteps evoking animosity or resignation in readers, but deepens the understanding, respect, and empathy towards cultural differences across races and ethnicities.
While the author adeptly ensured diverse representation across races and ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, and cultures among respondents, there are challenges due to language barriers and cultural differences in interviews with some Asian Americans in this study. Those who do not speak English well may not be able to participate in the oral histories, since it is hard to find interpreters in all languages and interpretations between languages are always challenging. Although some demographically representative respondents who do not speak English may not have been able to share their experience, Zarsadiaz did a great job in including representative respondents who share different opinions, which helps to depict a comprehensive picture of the suburbanization history of the East Valley.
In addition, it would enhance the book if the author could have provided recommendations and implications, based on his findings, for contemporary built environment planning and design policies: for example, the policy of encouraging Accessory Dwelling Units in California suburbs to mitigate the housing shortage while keeping a low-rise suburban appearance. 3 Perhaps this is something other scholars can do; the history of Asian American suburbanization in the East Valley not only provides descriptions and explanations of an immigrant community’s settling process but also serves as scientific findings to support future research and equitable policy-making for the Asian American community's evolution.
These limited shortcomings aside, the book is an eye-opener in terms of understanding and deconstructing the myth of Asian Americans as an under-studied “model minority.” As in The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein, Zarsadiaz points out that White residents’ seemingly race-neutral beliefs, such as keeping a tranquil and clean suburban-looking landscape, disguised the suppression of Asian immigrants’ cultural expression due to racial stereotypes and discrimination—Asian American cultural expressions were seen as lower-status and disruptive. 4 These beliefs are forms of racial discrimination that hide behind reasonable-sounding spatial or economic considerations. Since many Asian Americans are “model minorities” who are willing to assimilate and align to the White lifestyle, attain a secure socio-economic status, and appear to live a good life, most literature ignores the Asian American experience, instead discussing racial discrimination towards other American minority communities. Zarsadiaz develops a new and parallel narrative: that racial discrimination also happens to “model minorities,” Asian Americans, in order to suppress the cultural expression and influences that they gain through their affluence.
It is also intriguing to see the anatomy of the psychological mechanism of a proportion of Asian immigrants who seem to be successful in assimilating to White suburban “country living.” From their perspective, unassimilated behaviors might be seen as bad habits. In the book, I sensed their internalization of some White residents’ stereotypes and ungrounded negative cultural imagination of Asian immigrants. They were afraid of being rejected by White residents and unconsciously convinced themselves to assimilate, even taking on negative stereotypes towards other Asian Americans. This psychological mechanism of identification and projection is intricate. Zarsadiaz’s observation and analysis are thought-provoking.
In sum, the book explores how Asian immigrants in the East San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles adapted, resisted, and negotiated cultural shifts within suburban communities, shedding light on their strategies and challenges for negotiating their place to fit in and preserve identity and heritage in their new suburban setting. The history of Asian American suburbanization in the book suggests that, in country of immigrants like the U.S. and in a global cosmopolitan hub like Los Angeles, assimilation is not one-directional, and instead, assimilation is multi-directional among different races and ethnicities, different cultures, and earlier and later arrivals.
