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Rating: 
Summary: So gnarled with big words and long sentences...
Review: I had to read this for my Theories of Race course at Mills College, and after the class collectively ranted against this structural disaster, I am sure the professor won't use it again. Lowe knows of what she speaks, but can you decipher it? We couldn't. And, it is unfortunate, as she is obviously a leader in her field. I resent scholars making things overly difficult, as it alienates the reader - and boy, did Lowe do a fabulous job with that! I suggest reading Ron Takaki if you want a good, very rewarding look at ethnicity in America. He rocks! Lowe rocks...somewhere, but not here. (meow!)
Rating: 
Summary: from a former Lisa Lowe student
Review: I read only one chapter of this book--Cannon, Institutionalization, Identity: Asian American Studies, and I considered it sufficiently annoying that I did not want to read any more of it. I found Lowe's jargon especially grating and her writing convoluted. It is unfortunate that such sloppy writing passes as academic excellence. Here is an example: "While institutionalizing interdisciplinary study risks integrating it into a system that threatens to appropriate what is most critical and oppositional about that study, the logic through which the university incorporates areas of interdisciplinarity provides for the possibility that these sites will remain oppositional forums, productively antagonistic to notions of autonomous culture and disciplinary regulation and to the interpellation of students as univocal subjects" (p. 41). I do not have enough of a background in the study of Asian American literature to evaluate Lowe's insights, and I imagine I would have appreciated her book more if she had written it in a style similar to that of King-Kok Cheung or Elaine Kim. I do not understand how Lowe can read such beautifully-written Asian American literature and then herself write so poorly.
Rating:
Summary: Sophisticated scholarship but of questionable utility
Review: Immigrant Acts performs its own multiple acts of immigration, assimilation, suablternization in sophisticated and probing ways that would unite a Gramscian problematic of class and place with a more professional concern with identity politics in ethnic studies and Asian American racialization patterns. While I might want to argue with the will to theorize and include diverse forms of decolonization and resistance that do not fit this racial calculus of abjected othering, still, this book is an indispensable text of US identity politics in this era of maximal globalization and localization for the Pax Americana. The chapter on beloved T. Cha remains incredibly good, the historicized reminder of immigrant acts of rejection directed against the Chinese then and Mexicans and Vietnamese now haunts any easy vision of US liberal tolerance and multicultural peace. I need this book, Mr. President, even when I hate it and love it and get locked into its hyper-textual terms (one sign of textual power, that, the displacement of the reader). I am no immigrant act myself, just a Scottish Italian half-poet,but am working overtime out here in Asia/Pacific waters off the coast of California and Taiwan and need to study the main moves. My praise is superfluous at this point, and the indigenous struggles go on far from the immigrant acts of assimilation textual resistance. The US nation wobbles, not a bit.
Rating:
Summary: from a former Lisa Lowe student
Review: Personally, I feel that Professor Lowe is very insightful about theory, the Asian American experience, colonialism, identity politics, cultural criticism. etc. I learned a lot from her as a student and after reading this book, I continue to learn from her. I think Immigrant Acts deserves a 5 star rating for academic merit. BUT, it has been 5 years since I taken one of her courses and I have forgotten how jargon filled her language can be. After being away from academia, reading this book was a daunting task. As much as I respect this text, I feel that it is unfortunate that Professor Lowe cannot relate to a general audience. She is definitely (intentionally or unintentionally) catering to fellow scholars. She has a lot to say and offer her reading public. Its too bad that most people can not understand her. I give only one star for writing style and being reader friendly. Sorry, Professor Lowe.
Rating: 
Summary: Pain.
Review: When my favorite professor assigned "Immigrant Acts" for an Independent Study on race, immigration and labor, he said, rather dryly, "I'll just throw that in there to see if it pisses you off." I've read plenty of bad academic writing, but Lowe astounded me anew. "Turgid," "bloated," "ponderous," and "pompous" are adjectives that came to mind as I attempted to claw meaning from her prose. It's that bleeding awful. Certainly clearer, more graceful, and far less alienating ways to convey these ideas exist (and no, they aren't dumbed-down). Why, oh why, do some academics *insist* on torturing their readers like this? The self-consciously opaque language does nothing to add substance or authority to Lowe's argument. If anything, it weakens it; there are only so many times the reader can exclaim, "Oh, so *that's* what she meant! Why didn't she just say it?" before weary contempt kicks in.
Had my professor not insisted I read it, I would have ditched "Immigrant Acts" without regret. He was right--this book *did* piss me off, but in the wrong way. It wasn't the ideas or the argument that provoked me; it was the utter lack of regard for the reader. I did find Lowe's arguments intriguing once I managed to translate them, and I particularly liked Chapter 4, which critiques official productions of multiculturalism. Yet I'm still not entirely sure the work required was worth it. I also suspect there are finer points that I missed altogether, but since Lowe can't be bothered to present them clearly, I don't care to go back and try to find them.
Rating:
Summary: Pain.
Review: When my favorite professor assigned "Immigrant Acts" for an Independent Study on race, immigration and labor, he said, rather dryly, "I'll just throw that in there to see if it pisses you off." I've read plenty of bad academic writing, but Lowe astounded me anew. "Turgid," "bloated," "ponderous," and "pompous" are adjectives that came to mind as I attempted to claw meaning from her prose. It's that bleeding awful. Certainly clearer, more graceful, and far less alienating ways to convey these ideas exist (and no, they aren't dumbed-down). Why, oh why, do some academics *insist* on torturing their readers like this? The self-consciously opaque language does nothing to add substance or authority to Lowe's argument. If anything, it weakens it; there are only so many times the reader can exclaim, "Oh, so *that's* what she meant! Why didn't she just say it?" before weary contempt kicks in.
Had my professor not insisted I read it, I would have ditched "Immigrant Acts" without regret. He was right--this book *did* piss me off, but in the wrong way. It wasn't the ideas or the argument that provoked me; it was the utter lack of regard for the reader. I did find Lowe's arguments intriguing once I managed to translate them, and I particularly liked Chapter 4, which critiques official productions of multiculturalism. Yet I'm still not entirely sure the work required was worth it. I also suspect there are finer points that I missed altogether, but since Lowe can't be bothered to present them clearly, I don't care to go back and try to find them.
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