Envisioning America : Stanford University Press : 9780804762427 : 0804762422 : 20 Oct 2009 : Envisioning America is a groundbreaking and richly detailed study of how naturalized Chinese living in Southern California become highly involved civic and political actors. Like other immigrants to the United States, their individual life stories are of survival, becoming, and belonging. But unlike any other Asian immigrant group before them, they have the resources?Western-based educations, entrepreneurial strengths, and widely based social networks in Asia?to become fully accepted in their new homes. Nevertheless, Chinese Americans are finding that their social credentials can be a double-edged sword. Their complete incorporation as citizens is bounded both by mainstream discourse in the United States, which paints them racially as perpetual foreigners, and by an existing Asian-Pacific American community not always accepting of their economic achievements and transnational ties. Their atte