diverse populations, and what they suggested about the ways that different groups were and were not sharing space and building community together.
In search of answers to my many questions, I began spending more time there—primarily in Fremont, the largest Silicon Valley suburb by land area and one of the region’s most racially and ethnically diverse communities. On foot, by car, and lingering in many of Fremont’s public and semipublic spaces, I started to “take the city apart.”36 I explored its many neighborhoods and learned by seeing signs of difference in the landscape and asking questions about the people and processes that produced them.37 I sat down with business owners, residents, and city officials to hear their takes on the changing landscape I was witnessing firsthand. From old-timers, I heard what it was like to live through the valley’s swift transformation from a spattering of small rural townships into a global gateway. Many of their stories carried a deep unease about the changing demographics of the region and its impact on places that had once seemed so familiar and stable. Some complained about their new neighbors’ flashy oversized homes, Asian American parents pushing their kids too hard in schools, and the large number of new Asian-oriented shopping centers that were “taking over” the city. Asian Americans, especially recently arrived immigrants from China, Taiwan, and India, offered different perspectives. Their stories emphasized their struggles and successes in the valley. They spoke of the trials they underwent to establish themselves in the region and, with pride, at how far they had come. They showed off their large homes as signs of their success, boasted of their children’s high grade point averages, and frequently noted how much easier their lives had become because of the growing number of Asian American-owned businesses in the region. In city council and planning commission meetings, I listened as heated debates over these issues went back and forth between long-term and new residents.
These conflicts led to me to consider the spaces at the center of these debates and their importance to Asian American newcomers. As I dug deeper, I began conducting in-depth interviews with the people most familiar with these spaces and the social conflicts that surrounded them. I spoke with students, parents, principals, teachers, and school board members; the mayor, council members, planning commission members, planners, and other city staff; mall developers, store owners, and shoppers; homeowners, architects, and designers—over 130 in all. I spent time observing the everyday life of these spaces—hanging out in ethnic shopping malls, quietly sitting in the back of high school classes, and wandering the streets of neighborhoods most affected by large home development. I tracked census figures and demographic and spatial data available from government offices; spent days engulfed in the archives of the city council, the school board, the planning department, and local libraries; and became an avid reader of local and regional news, both past and present.38
My research helped me to resolve my initial reluctance to write about Asian Americans in Silicon Valley from the perspective of some of the most economically privileged among them. I worried that focusing primarily on the stories of Chinese and Indian Americans, Fremont’s largest Asian American groups, many of whom were highly educated, high-income professionals, would ignore the struggles of many who could not even afford entry into the valley’s exclusive suburbs. Indeed, the class status of many of Fremont’s Asian American residents has reinforced their efforts to carve out a place for themselves within this privileged suburb and many high-end neighborhoods within it. Further, their racialization as model minorities has led to their perceived exceptionalism compared with other groups that has further aided their integration and acceptance within White suburban communities.39 Yet I also began to see that the desires of high-income professional Asian Americans to reshape their communities according to their own values were shared by many. Rich and poor, White and non-White, single parents, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender people, teens, multigenerational households and other residents whose preferences do not conform to established suburban norms all struggle in various ways with a landscape that was simply not built with them in mind.40
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Landscapes offer a way to tell stories about a place.41 This book is organized around landscapes that recount Asian Americans’ struggles to make their homes in Silicon Valley. Collectively, these places and their politics show a suburban region turned upside down by battles over growth and development during a period of rapid immigration and demographic change.
The book begins by tracing the forces that drove Asian Americans’ multiple migrations to Silicon Valley. Chapter 1, “The New Gold Mountain,” explores why the valley became such an important hub of racial and ethnic diversity, especially among recently arrived Asian immigrants in the latter half of the 20th century and the early 21st century. Beginning with a brief look back at the pathways forged by early Asian American pioneers, the chapter focuses on the sweeping changes that occurred in the region economically, spatially, and socially after World War II. This period was defined by the region’s transformation from a largely rural economy to one driven by technological innovation and its simultaneous conversion from an agricultural landscape to one dominated by white-collar office parks and exclusive middle-class neighborhoods. After 1965, the valley’s boom in high tech began to reshape the demographics of the region as successive waves of immigrants, particularly those from Asia, began arriving to fill both highly skilled and unskilled jobs in the region’s burgeoning technology industries. The chapter shows how Asian Americans navigated their new terrain and put down roots in working- and middle-class neighborhoods. Some suburbs, such as Fremont, became particularly popular among middle-class Chinese and Indian Americans who made up the majority of the region’s newcomers. Local factors such as good schools, new and relatively affordable homes, easy access to high-tech jobs, and an extant Asian American community contributed to Fremont’s role as a popular meeting ground for Asian American migrants. The chapter underscores how this suburb’s rapid growth and development were prefaced on the valley’s booming innovation economy and Asian Americans’ own suburban dreams.
The next three chapters focus on the ways in which Asian Americans reshaped the region’s built form, social geography, and development politics. Chapter 2, “A Quality Education for Whom?,” considers how migrants’ educational priorities and practices reshaped Silicon Valley neighborhoods and schools. For many Asian American families, high-performing schools have been among the most important factors drawing them to particular communities around the region and to their imagined geography of “good” suburban neighborhoods. The academic culture and practices that Asian Americans introduced in Fremont schools, however, has been met with considerable resistance. A case study of the Mission San Jose neighborhood in Fremont shows that as large numbers of Asian American families moved into the community, primarily for access to its highly ranked schools, many established White families moved out. This pattern of so-called White flight was driven in part by tensions between Asian American and White students and parents over educational values, school culture, and academic competition. Although Asian Americans’ new wealth bought them entrée into some of the region’s best schools, their educational practices were widely criticized. Intense citywide battles erupted over school culture and curricula as parents and students asked whose values they represented and who they benefited most.
Chapter 3, “Mainstreaming the Asian Mall,” investigates Asian American-oriented shopping centers that are an increasingly popular part of the Silicon Valley landscape. The chapter shows that these malls are central in the lives of Asian American suburbanites. For many, the malls serve their practical needs, support vital social networks, and foster their sense of place, community, and connection to the larger Asian diaspora. But these vibrant pseudopublic spaces are also deeply contested. In Fremont, many non-Asian American residents, policy makers, and planners have charged that these malls are socially exclusionary and questioned their deviance in form and norm from the conventions of suburban retail. The chapter shows how these debates have framed ethnic shopping malls as “problem spaces” that required greater regulation and scrutiny. Yet planners and city officials have also used their power to regulate and control these shopping centers to
