Kelly H. Chong is a Professor and Chairperson of Sociology at the University of Kansas. She is the award-winning author of Deliverance and Submission: Evangelical Women and the Negotiation of Patriarchy in South Korea (2008) and numerous journal articles. Her current areas of scholarship include race/ethnicity, gender, immigration, religion, Asian American Studies, and Asian Studies.
This book offers a compelling and unique portrait of intermarriage among Asian Americans, from the formation of interracial and interethnic relationships to their development over time. Reaching beyond the common stereotypes, the book offers a nuanced analysis of how race shapes experiences of love, intimacy and family for Asian Americans. - Nazli Kibria, Professor of Sociology, Boston University In light of the growing debates about Asian Americans (and multiracial Asian/White people) comprising a kind of honorary White status in American society, this careful and nuanced book provides a fascinating account of how Asian Americans' negotiations with Whiteness is deeply ambivalent. By investigating both Asian Americans' interethnic and interracial unions, this book provides a groundbreaking understanding of the racial and ethnic fault lines in formation in the USA. - Miri Song, Professor of Sociology, University of Kent In Love Across Borders, Kelly H. Chong investigates how race influences marital boundary-crossings among Asian Americans even in an age when popular colorblind discourses discourage the seeing or discussion of race and racism. The book's attention to the development of Asian American panethnicity and the rise of intra-group marriage question the long-held assumption that assimilation will amount to intermarriage with Whites over successive generations, and the book's study of American/White intermarriage demonstrates the tensions Asian-Americans feel with respect to Whiteness in a society grounded in White normativity. Along with her ability to reveal how society's structure shapes individual lives, Chong's analysis is sharp and centers how racial/gender politics and cultural negotiations (including what it means to be Asian American) are all at work behind-the-scenes in family-making, and how this process reflects larger postcolonial political struggles even as it makes new identities. - Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, Professor of Sociology, University of Oregon