Nature Unfurled

Explores Asian Americans' diverse connections and interactions with the natural world

As immigrants and laborers, gardeners and artists, activists and vacationers, Asian Americans have played, worked, and worshipped in nature for almost two centuries, forging enduring relationships with diverse places and people. In the process, their actual or perceived ties to the environment have added to and amplified xenophobia and racist tropes. Indeed, white constructions of Asian Americans as the yellow peril, the perpetual foreigner, and the model minority were often intertwined with their environmental activities. At the same time, Asian Americans also harnessed environmental resources for their own needs, challenging restrictions and outmaneuvering their detractors in the process.

Expansive and groundbreaking, Nature Unfurled examines the links between Asian American and environmental history from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. With provocative essays on topics such as health in urban Chinatowns, Japanese oysters on Washington tidelands, American Indian and Japanese American experiences at the Leupp boarding school and isolation center, Southeast Asian community gardens, and contemporary Asian American outdoor recreation, this collection underscores the vibrancy of the field of Asian American environmental history.

Connie Y. Chiang is a professor of history and environmental studies at Bowdoin College. She is author of Shaping the Shoreline: Fisheries and Tourism on the Monterey Coast and Nature behind Barbed Wire: An Environmental History of the Japanese American Incarceration. Contributors: Katharine Achacoso, Connie Y. Chiang, Yesenia Navarrete Hunter, Hana Maruyama, Christine Peralta, JoAnna Poblete, Michael Menor Salgarolo, Tamara Venit Shelton, Ashanti Shih, Jeannie N. Shinozuka, Cecilia M. Tsu, Davina Two Bears, Sarah D. Wald, and Kathleen Whalen

Introduction, by Connie Y. Chiang

PART ONE. The Nature of Yellow Perils

White Plague, Yellow Peril: Tuberculosis and Environmental Health in San Francisco Chinatown, by Tamara Venit Shelton

A New Immigration Peril: Race and Erasure in the Making of the Pacific Oyster in Washington State, by Kathleen Whalen

Murderous Giant Hornets, Crushing Lanternflies, and Silken Jorō Webs: Racialized Responses to New Asian Bio-Invasions, by Jeannie N. Shinozuka

PART TWO. Place and Belonging

Unruly Floods, Healing Waters: Chinese Settlers and the Los Angeles River, 1870s–1930s, by Ashanti Shih

August on My Back: Rhythms of Issei Motherhood and Labor on the Yakama Reservation, by Yesenia Navarrete Hunter

Reshaping Agrarian Visions: Southeast Asian Refugee Community Gardens and the Limits of Rural Continuity, by Cecilia M. Tsu

PART THREE. Resistance and Justice

The Jail In the Cellar: Carcerality and Wastelanding at Leupp Boarding School and Isolation Center, by Hana Maruyama and Davina Two Bears

Environmental Justice Denied: Japanese American Testimonies and the Campaign for Redress, by Connie Y. Chiang

Challenging White Sanctuary: Twenty-First Century Representations of Asian American Outdoor Recreation, by Sarah D. Wald

Connecting the Filipinx Diaspora and Environmental History: A Roundtable Discussion, by Katharine Achacoso, Christine Peralta, and Michael Menor Salgarolo, moderated by JoAnna Poblete