Description: Does "Asian American" denote an ethnic or racial identification? Is a person of mixed ancestry, the child of European American and Asian American parents, Asian American? What does it mean to refer to first-generation Hmong refugees and fifth-generation Chinese Americans both as Asian American?

In Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation-State, Robert Chang examines the current discourse on race and law and the implications of postmodern theory and affirmative action -- all of which have largely excluded Asian Americans -- in order to develop a theory of critical Asian American legal studies.

Demonstrating that the ongoing debate surrounding multiculturalism and immigration in the U.S. is really a struggle over the meaning of "America", Chang reveals how the construction of Asian American-ness has become a necessary component in stabilizing a national American identity. He analyzes the position of Asian Americans within America's black/white racial paradigm, how "the family" operates as a stand-in for race and nation, and how the figure of the immigrant embodies a central contradiction in allegories of America.

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