Please join us on our first talk of the year by James Zarsadiaz, as part of the George Sycip Speaker Series on Filipinx Studies:

 

In his award-winning book, Resisting Change in Suburbia (UC Press, 2022), historian James Zarsadiaz argues that myths of the American Dream, the American West, and post-WWII suburbia shaped the day-to-day lives of homeowners in Los Angeles' San Gabriel Valley ("SGV"). Particularly within the realms of architecture, culture, and civic life, the motif and ideal of "country living" suburbia informed discussions and policies regarding who or what was considered acceptable in the Euro-American landscapes of a booming Southern California. Critics believed Asian immigrants settling between the 1980s and 2000s disrupted the norms of suburbia thus changing (i.e., "threatening") its well-to-do reputation. But as Zarsadiaz shows, upper-income Asian Americans actively worked to protect their slice of the suburban idyll because it sustained their class privilege and illustrated their abilities to assimilate. Despite moments of tension or misunderstanding, white and affluent Asian residents allied to preserve what they believed were "proper," timeless lifestyles amid a rapidly globalizing and modernizing U.S. Now deep into the 21st century and beyond California, Asian Americans are arguably the most suburbanized racial group in America.