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megansoetaert's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
4.25
A very informative look into refugee status in the US, the “hyperghetto” as created in US cities, and Cambodian/Khmer experiences as refugees from the 1970s til today.
Dr. Tang incorporated the story of Ra, a Cambodian woman resettled as a refugee in the Bronx, to help tell the story of the injustices Cambodian refugees faced in the US refugee system and the US as a whole. This fusion of memoir & academic analysis worked very well for this book, and as a former student of Dr. Tang’s, i loved getting to learn from him again.
Dr. Tang incorporated the story of Ra, a Cambodian woman resettled as a refugee in the Bronx, to help tell the story of the injustices Cambodian refugees faced in the US refugee system and the US as a whole. This fusion of memoir & academic analysis worked very well for this book, and as a former student of Dr. Tang’s, i loved getting to learn from him again.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence and War
sarahsreadinglist's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Eric Tang’s Unsettled provides a thoughtful deconstruction of standard refugee narratives and an extremely personal analysis of the status of refugees (specially, Cambodian refugees) in relationship to the US state. This book was essentially a very informative and thought provoking essay that focused on one woman’s journey from living under the Khmer Rouge to living in the Bronx, making an otherwise very scholarly/academic discussion more accessible to those not well-versed in the academics of American empire and war.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Abandonment, War, Genocide, Racism, Violence, Sexism, and Death
Minor: Car accident, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Rape, Murder, and Child abuse
enkenkm's review against another edition
5.0
amazing book. came up in two classes: one about Asian Americans, another on refugees. hard recommend for anyone interested in urban spaces, SE Asian history, refugees and more generally, the lives of people who exist on the margins.
gabsalott13's review against another edition
4.0
***NOTE: these reviews are reading responses that are slightly amended from my course assignments for CPLN 624: Readings in Race, Poverty, and Place.
Eric Tang’s Unsettled is an exercise in “activist-oriented scholarship”, where he partners with a woman, Ra Pronh, to share her experience as a Cambodian immigrant and resident of various parts of the Northwest Bronx, a place he and other academics call the “hyperghetto.”
Eric explains that the hyperghetto is a “neo-plantation,” or the modern continuation of slavery due to the way this location captures people of color in an unrelenting system of punishment and poverty. He argues that the hyperghetto is a place society believes only Black people can (permanently) reside in. This, he argues, is why despite their immense struggles, Cambodian refugees were subject to “refugee exceptionalism”, a phenomenon where policy makers, landlords, and social workers believed they were “in the hyperghetto, but not of it.”
In many ways, this book unravels the neat, progressive narrative of resettlement often touted for Asian-Americans: because of our country’s deep disfunction, each year in America bore even more setbacks for Ra. We come to understand that she sees her displacement from Cambodia due to genocide and her many displacements in New York as a continual state of warfare: against the Khmer Rouge, then Bronx slumlords, then the welfare system, and so on. Eric defines this continual state as refugee temporality, the refugee’s knowledge that each displacement/resettlement draws on an old form of power that is continually cemented in their lives. Embracing this alternative sense of time helped Ra “resist the salvation narratives” people asked her to tell about her experiences with imperialism and the hyperghetto.
For me, the most heartbreaking part of Eric and Ra’s necessary breakdown of this “false timeline” was the generational challenges of second and third-generation Cambodians. This is first clear in the generational differences in Cambodian activism. Eric describes how teen activists wanted to make various demands of the welfare system, and their parents essentially warned them that change is only possible by moving away from your issue. This resignation is the wisdom of people who have lived and suffered under the hands not just of Communist armies, but also under capitalist governments. By the end of the story, we see that the first-generation refugees’ belief in the neverending downward movement of life has extended to their children and grandchildren, who have their own host of economic, incarceration, and other challenges. Despite Eric and the Pronhs all meeting through community organizing, it’s deeply upsetting to hear that only Eric was able to continue this work, largely because he has a job that pays him to do so. The limited mobility of many people of color (even those not living in the hyperghetto) is something more researchers are starting to address. However, as Unsettled shows, we are a long way off from giving people reason and time to trust that our system can ever be reformed.
Eric Tang’s Unsettled is an exercise in “activist-oriented scholarship”, where he partners with a woman, Ra Pronh, to share her experience as a Cambodian immigrant and resident of various parts of the Northwest Bronx, a place he and other academics call the “hyperghetto.”
Eric explains that the hyperghetto is a “neo-plantation,” or the modern continuation of slavery due to the way this location captures people of color in an unrelenting system of punishment and poverty. He argues that the hyperghetto is a place society believes only Black people can (permanently) reside in. This, he argues, is why despite their immense struggles, Cambodian refugees were subject to “refugee exceptionalism”, a phenomenon where policy makers, landlords, and social workers believed they were “in the hyperghetto, but not of it.”
In many ways, this book unravels the neat, progressive narrative of resettlement often touted for Asian-Americans: because of our country’s deep disfunction, each year in America bore even more setbacks for Ra. We come to understand that she sees her displacement from Cambodia due to genocide and her many displacements in New York as a continual state of warfare: against the Khmer Rouge, then Bronx slumlords, then the welfare system, and so on. Eric defines this continual state as refugee temporality, the refugee’s knowledge that each displacement/resettlement draws on an old form of power that is continually cemented in their lives. Embracing this alternative sense of time helped Ra “resist the salvation narratives” people asked her to tell about her experiences with imperialism and the hyperghetto.
For me, the most heartbreaking part of Eric and Ra’s necessary breakdown of this “false timeline” was the generational challenges of second and third-generation Cambodians. This is first clear in the generational differences in Cambodian activism. Eric describes how teen activists wanted to make various demands of the welfare system, and their parents essentially warned them that change is only possible by moving away from your issue. This resignation is the wisdom of people who have lived and suffered under the hands not just of Communist armies, but also under capitalist governments. By the end of the story, we see that the first-generation refugees’ belief in the neverending downward movement of life has extended to their children and grandchildren, who have their own host of economic, incarceration, and other challenges. Despite Eric and the Pronhs all meeting through community organizing, it’s deeply upsetting to hear that only Eric was able to continue this work, largely because he has a job that pays him to do so. The limited mobility of many people of color (even those not living in the hyperghetto) is something more researchers are starting to address. However, as Unsettled shows, we are a long way off from giving people reason and time to trust that our system can ever be reformed.
noahregained's review against another edition
4.0
Guilt doesn't even begin to describe what has been done.
jhuynh93's review against another edition
5.0
Thoroughly enjoyed this book and learning about Ra Pronh's story within the contexts of the nation-state construction of refugee. Tang pushes back on the nation of linearity that exists in the refugee-resettlement framework.