8Books Sale Announcement: $2.99 eBooks

Everyone loves a good sale, and this one doesn’t even hog space on your bookshelf! For the entire month of April, the University of Illinois Press is offering three Asian American-interest titles for only $2.99. All e-books are available on Kindle, Nook, Google Play, and Kobo.

Asian Americans in Dixie: Race and Migration in the South Edited by Khyati Y. Joshi and Jigna Desai
The migrations of Manilamen, Bengali Muslim peddlers, and Chinese merchants and coolies extend the history of Asian Americans in the South into the early nineteenth and twentieth century. Between 1950 and 2000, the Asian American population in the American South increased more than one hundred times, much higher than the national average and the greatest increase among all regions of the United States. Extending the understanding of race and ethnicity in the South beyond the prism of black-white relations, this interdisciplinary collection explores the growth, impact, and significance of Asian Americans in Southern life and discusses the formation of past and emerging Asian American communities in the region. (List Price: $28)

Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture by Leilani Nishime
In this first book-length study of media images of multiracial Asian Americans, Leilani Nishime traces the codes that alternatively enable and prevent audiences from recognizing the multiracial status of Asian Americans. Nishime’s perceptive readings of popular media–movies, television shows, magazine articles, and artwork–indicate how and why the viewing public often fails to identify multiracial Asian Americans. Using actor Keanu Reeves, golfer Tiger Woods, and the television show Battlestar Galactica as examples, Nishime suggests that this failure is tied to gender, sexuality, and post-racial politics. In contrast to these representations, Nishime provides a set of alternative moments when audiences can view multiracial Asians as multiracial. (List Price: $28)

Nikkei Baseball: Japanese American Players from Immigration and Internment to the Major Leagues by Samuel O. Regalado
Nikkei Baseball examines baseball’s evolving importance to the Japanese American community and the construction of Japanese American identity. Originally introduced in Japan in the late 1800s, baseball was played in the United States by Japanese immigrants first in Hawaii, then San Francisco and northern California, then in amateur leagues up and down the Pacific Coast. For Japanese American players, baseball was seen as a sport that encouraged healthy competition by imposing rules and standards of ethical behavior for both players and fans. The value of baseball as exercise and amusement quickly expanded into something even more important, a means for strengthening social ties within Japanese American communities and for linking their aspirations to America’s pastimes and America’s promise. (List Price: $25)