I loved the premise of this nonfiction book with its overarching theme of unassimilation. I felt a real paradigm shift in my head reading this. I think it’s common to hear about what we sacrifice with assimilation, but flipping that and focusing on what it means to refuse to assimilate and highlighting spaces where assimilation is contested truly feels like a radical framework worth exploring.

My favorite chapters were the ones on ethnoburbs (ethnic enclave suburbs) and Asian churches/evangelicals, which were topics I haven’t read about before and helped me gain perspective on upbringings different from my own.

I also appreciated the author’s thoughts around Asian Americans as an identity group and current issues that we face. She suggests ditching the term Asian American in favor of Asian Diaspora, which she makes an interesting case for.

Although this is positioned as a combination of manifesto and memoir, that’s not how I would describe it. I don’t think it had the tone and force of a manifesto (or at least what I think of as a manifesto). The writing was a bit too scholarly and I was wanting it to be more personal and direct, so I would say it’s more like essays than a manifesto-memoir.

Overall, the book brings up interesting ideas and I think it’s worth reading!