Böcker av Joel S. Franks

This book sheds light on experiences relatively underrepresented in academic and non-academic sport history. It examines how Asian and Pacific Islander peoples used American football to maintain a sense of community while encountering racial exclusion, labor exploitation, and colonialism. Through their participation and spectatorship in American football, Asian and Pacific Islander people crossed treacherous cultural frontiers to construct what sociologist Elijah Anderson has called a cosmopolitan canopy under which Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and people of diverse racial and ethnic identities interacted with at least a semblance of respect and equity. And perhaps a surprising number of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have excelled in college and even professional football before the 1960s. Finally, acknowledging the impressive influx of elite Pacific Islander gridders who surfaced in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, it is vital to note as well the racialized nativism shadowing the lives of these athletes.

Provides a comprehensive history of Asian American basketball. It traces how Asian Americans have used basketball to provide them a sense of community, examines how through basketball Asian Americans have traversed racial and ethnic barriers, and demonstrates that perhaps a surprising number of Asian American have excelled at high school, college, and professional hoops.

With the rise of stars such as Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, and now Daisuke Matsuzaka, fans can easily name players from the island country of Japan. Less widely known is that baseball has long been played on other Pacific islands, in pre-statehood Hawaii, for instance, and in Guam, Samoa and the Philippines.