The First Suburban Chinatown

The Remaking of Monterey Park, California

Timothy Fong

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781566392624, 9781566391238
• eBook ISBN: 9781439904633
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Asian American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Monterey Park, California, only eight miles east of downtown Los Angeles, was dubbed by the media as the "First Suburban Chinatown." The city was a predominantly white middle-class bedroom community in the 1970s when large numbers of Chinese immigrants transformed it into a bustling international boomtown. It is now the only city in the United States with a majority Asian American population. Timothy P. Fong examines the demographic, economic, social, and cultural changes taking place there, and the political reactions to the change.

Fong, a former journalist, reports on how pervasive anti-Asian sentiment fueled a series of initiatives intended to strengthen "community control," including a movement to make English the official language. Recounting the internal strife and the beginnings of recovery, Fong explores how race and ethnicity issues are used as political organizing tools and weapons.

In the series Asian American History and Culture, edited by Sucheng Chan, David Palumbo-Liu, Michael Omi, K. Scott Wong, and Linda Trinh Võ.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: A New and Dynamic Community
• 1. Ramona Acres to the Chinese Beverly Hills: Demographic Change
• 2. Enter the Dragon: Economic Change
• 3. "I Don't Feel at Home Anymore": Social and Cultural Change
• 4. Community Fragmentation and the Slow-Growth Movement
• 5. Controlled Growth and the Official-Englsih Movement
• 6. "City with a Heart"?
• 7. The Politics of Realignment
• 8. Theoretical Perspectives on Monterey Park
• Conclusion: From Marginal to Mainstream
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index