The Color of Success

Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority

By: Ellen D. Wu

Narrated by: Emily Zeller

Length: 12 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

The Color of Success tells of the astonishing transformation of Asians in the United States from the "yellow peril" to "model minorities" - peoples distinct from the white majority but lauded as well-assimilated, upwardly mobile, and exemplars of traditional family values - in the middle decades of the 20th century. As Ellen Wu shows, liberals argued for the acceptance of these immigrant communities into the national fold, charging that the failure of America to live in accordance with its democratic ideals endangered the country's aspirations to world leadership.

Weaving together myriad perspectives, Wu provides an unprecedented view of racial reform and the contradictions of national belonging in the civil rights era. She highlights the contests for power and authority within Japanese and Chinese America alongside the designs of those external to these populations, including government officials, social scientists, journalists, and others. And she demonstrates that the invention of the model minority took place in multiple arenas, such as battles over zoot suiters leaving wartime internment camps, the juvenile delinquency panic of the 1950s, Hawaii statehood, and the African American freedom movement. Together, these illuminate the impact of foreign relations on the domestic racial order and how the nation accepted Asians as legitimate citizens while continuing to perceive them as indelible outsiders.

By charting the emergence of the model minority stereotype, The Color of Success reveals that this far-reaching, politically charged process continues to have profound implications for how Americans understand race, opportunity, and nationhood.

©2014 Princeton University Press (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

The narrator needs to research pronunciation

The book covered its topic well with good anecdotes, data and facts to describe how Asian assimilation created the myth of a "model minority" and was used to further discrimination against blacks. I am a sansei who was raised to be a model citizen after my mother was humiliated and scarred by WWII internment. I didn't question the philosophy of keeping my head down and getting all A's in school until I learned about internment when I was in high school. i related to the book and felt it covered the topic well. I hadn't thought much about how Asian Americans' "model" status was used to put down blacks, but the point is well taken. My problem with the Audible version is the narrator who misread and mispronounced several names and terms. Before getting paid to read a book, one should study the vocabulary and present it correctly. I haven't seen a print copy, so I may be wrong, but she said "homogeny" where "hegemony" was more appropriate and "comprise" where "compromise" made more sense. Other mistakes were "Gila" with a hard "g" instead of "hee-la," "Too-el" for "Tule" (pronounced too-lee) for names of internment camps. She said "Ku-ro-MO-bo" when it is pronounced "Ku-ROMrom-bo," the Japanese term for blacks and "Ha-KOO-jin" (with emphasis on second syllable) when it is correctly pronounced "Ha-ku-jeen," (no noticeable emphasis) the Japanese term for whites. The black singer is Paul Robeson (pronounced robe-son in two syllables), not Ro-be-son as she said it. And finally, Senator Dan Inouye of Hawaii is pronounced "ee-NOH-oo-eh" not "in-NEW-yeh." I'm almost surprised she said "Fong" correctly. Admittedly most of the mispronunciations were of Japanese words, but when you read a book about Asians, you should expect to encounter such terms and prepare for them. For me, the poor narrator detracted from my full enjoyment of this book.