Chineseness across Borders

"Chineseness Across Borders is at heart a study of how Chinese-Americans feel about their origins. . . . [F]ascinating. . . . This is a sane and responsible study. It's blessedly lacking in academic jargon." - Bradley Winterton, Taipei Times

"[A] lively, timely book on a topic of global interest." - Philippe Couton, Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology

"[T]he book throws useful light on the scope of complexity of multicultural life." - Hugh D.R. Baker , Social Anthropology

"Louie writes sensitively about her group’s encounter with their Chinese hosts and skilfully explores its complex interactions. She conducted her fieldwork on many sites and in diverse settings. She developed an innovative methodology for her ethnography of genealogical tourism and the ethnic rally that she calls ‘mobile anthropology’. Thus, her methods match her thesis, that the identity of young Chinese Americans is protean and transilient rather than tied to a single place or viewpoint." - Gregor Benton , Ethnic and Racial Studies

"This book provides great insights of the multiple ways to craft relationships with China and the multiple formations of cultural identities. [Louie's] transnational perspectives can be great use to scholars, educators, and teachers seeking culturally relevant ways of teaching as well as to sociologists and ethnographers." - Chiharu H. Uchida , Anthropology & Education Quarterly

"While the tidbits of personal narratives are the most interesting, Louie's extensively researched treatise explores the ever-changing Chinese American identity." - Terry Hong , Asian Week

“Andrea Louie provides an engaging ethnography of the dual investment of mainland Chinese and Chinese American youth in defining what it is to be Chinese in diaspora. Louie’s attention to the role of the Chinese state in fostering ‘geneological tourism’ helps to break new ground in Asian American and diaspora studies.” - Kamala Visweswaran, author of Fictions of Feminist Ethnography

“Andrea Louie seamlessly guides a discussion of China and Chinese America from the difficult topography of race and nation to the heartfelt search for the understanding of ancestry and home.” - Shawn Wong, author of the novel American Knees

“Andrea Louie’s work heralds a new and important phase in the anthropology of transnationalism and globalization. She has produced a very convincing and elegantly nuanced ethnographic exploration of Chinese and Chinese American negotiations of ‘Chineseness.’” - Martin F. Manalansan IV, author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora