Asian American sporting cultures / edited by Stanley I. Thangaraj, Constancio R. Arnaldo, Jr., and Christina B. Chin ; foreword by J. Jack Halberstam ; afterword by Lisa Lowe.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed February 11, 2016).

Includes index.

Asian American Sporting Cultures -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I Asian American Sports in Historical Context -- 1 From Perpetual Foreigner to Pacific Rim Entrepreneur -- 2 Reflections on Sport Spectatorship and Immigrant Life -- Part II Asian American Sporting Celebrities -- 3 Everybody Loves an Underdog -- 4 Manny "Pac- Man" Pacquiao, the Transnational Fist, and the Southern California Ringside Community -- Part III Complicating "Model Minority" Myths, Orientalism, and Gendered Stereotypes -- 5 Indian Americans and the "Brain Sport" of Spelling Bees -- 6 Mixed Martial Arts, Caged Orientalism, and Female Asian American Bodies -- 7 The Continued Legacy of Japanese American Youth Basketball Leagues -- Part IV Refugees, Pacific Islanders, and Sport -- 8 Hmong Youth, American Football, and the Cultural Politics of Ethnic Sports Tournaments -- 9 Lin, Te'o, and Asian American Masculinities in Sporting Flux -- Afterword -- About the Contributors -- Index.

Delves into the long history of Asian American sporting cultures, considering how identities and communities are negotiated on sporting fieldsThrough a close examination of Asian American sporting cultures ranging from boxing and basketball to spelling bees and wrestling, the contributors reveal the intimate connection between sport and identity formation. Sport plays a special role in the processes of citizen-making and of the policing of national and diasporic bodies. It is thus one key area in which Asian American stereotypes may be challenged, negotiated, and destroyed as athletic performances create multiple opportunities for claiming American identities.This volume incorporates work on Pacific Islander, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Americans as well as East Asian Americans, and explores how sports are gendered, including examinations of Asian American men's attempts to claim masculinity through sporting cultures as well as the "Orientalism" evident in discussions of mixed martial arts as practiced by Asian American female fighters. This American story illuminates how marginalized communities perform their American-ness through co-ethnic and co-racial sporting spaces.

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