America for Americans, Erika Lee
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America for Americans
A History of Xenophobia in the United States

Author: Erika Lee

Narrator: Erika Lee

Unabridged: 13 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 11/26/2019


Synopsis

This definitive history of American xenophobia is "essential reading for anyone who wants to build a more inclusive society" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist)

The United States is known as a nation of immigrants. But it is also a nation of xenophobia. In America for Americans, Erika Lee shows that an irrational fear, hatred, and hostility toward immigrants has been a defining feature of our nation from the colonial era to the Trump era. Benjamin Franklin ridiculed Germans for their "strange and foreign ways." Americans' anxiety over Irish Catholics turned xenophobia into a national political movement. Chinese immigrants were excluded, Japanese incarcerated, and Mexicans deported.

Today, Americans fear Muslims, Latinos, and the so-called browning of America. Forcing us to confront this history, Lee explains how xenophobia works, why it has endured, and how it threatens America. Now updated with an afterword reflecting on how the coronavirus pandemic turbocharged xenophobia, America for Americans is an urgent spur to action for any concerned citizen.

Author Bio

Erika Lee is the award-winning author of several works, including At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943, co-authored Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America, and numerous journal articles. She is the granddaughter of Chinese immigrants who entered the United States through both Angel Island and Ellis Island. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Passionate about preserving the histories of America's diverse immigrants, she gives presentations around the country and has written several articles and two award-winning books. She is the recipient of the Theodore Saloutos Prize in Immigration Studies, the History book award from the Association of Asian American Studies, the Non-Fiction Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the Western History Association Caughey Prize. Erika teaches immigration history at the University of Minnesota, where she is also the Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair in Immigration History and Director of the Immigration History Research Center.

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