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ABOUT THE BOOK

From the late eighteenth century, the hinterlands of Northern Luzon and its Indigenous people were in the crosshairs of imperial and capitalist extraction. 

Combining the breadth of global history with the intimacy of biography, Adrian De Leon follows the people of Northern Luzon across space and time, advancing a new vision of the United States's Pacific empire that begins with the natives and migrants who were at the heart of colonialism and its everyday undoing. 

From the emergence of Luzon's eighteenth-century tobacco industry and the Hawaii Sugar Planters' Association's documentation of workers to the movement of people and ideas across the Suez Canal and the stories of Filipino farmworkers in the American West, De Leon traces "the Filipino" as a racial category emerging from the labor, subjugation, archiving, and resistance of native people.

An essential resource that addresses the unique experiences of trauma, healing, and mental health in Asian and Asian American communities.

Coauthors Soo Jin Lee and Linda Yoon are professional therapists who witnessed firsthand how mental health issues often went unaddressed not only in their own immigrant families, but in Asian and Asian American communities. Where I Belong shows us how the cycle of trauma can play out in our relationships, placing Asian American experiences front and center to help us process and heal from racial and intergenerational trauma.

    This book validates our experiences and helps us understand how they fit into the broader context of our family history and the trauma experienced by previous generations. Lee and Yoon draw on their own stories, as well as those of a diverse segment of the Asian diaspora, to help us feel seen and connected to our wider community. They provide essential therapeutic tools, reflection questions, journal prompts, and grounding exercises to empower readers to identify their strengths and resilience across generations and to embrace the beauty and fullness of their own identity and culture.