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Claiming Diaspora is an important contribution to the growing body of work examining the musical activities of Asian Americans.2 As one might expect from an ethnomusicological study, the book focuses on a specific cultural group within a single geographical space: Chinese Americans in New York City. Despite the broad title, the book is grounded almost entirely in New York City. However, it boldly and innovatively challenges the limitations and problems of ethnographic-based work. Chinese Americans are shown to be part of a diverse community, composed of individuals in a multitude of linguistic, social, national, and ethnic groups, which are further intersected by class and gender. This cultural diversity is reflected by a wide range of genres of music that includes several different types of Chinese opera, traditional instrumental music, folk song, Western art music, contemporary concert music by Chinese composers, Chinese pop, and Asian American jazz. This breadth of genres is exceptional in ethnomusicological studies, which Zheng points out are too often reduced to discussions of "X people from X place playing X type of music" (18). Zheng goes to great length to make each of those X's plural.
This approach, and the theoretical discussion that supports it, closely aligns this work with Deborah Wong's Speak It Louder, a landmark study in Asian American identity and music making.3 Both books document and celebrate musics that often seem invisible to outsiders and move effortlessly from ethnography to musicological description and into cultural critique. Both writers take a multidisciplinary approach that includes ethnomusicology, ethnic studies, anthropology, and cultural criticism. Unlike Wong, Zheng contextualizes her ethnographic work with a detailed historical examination of Chinese American music that begins in the 1850s. The rich historical data, which include some of the very first Chinese music documented in the United States, help explain the nuances and differences found in her ethnographic research from the 1980s to 1990s. This information also further distinguishes her work in that it balances ethnographic and historical research and provides a stable ground for her sophisticated interpretation and cultural critique.
The book employs a unique organization that is neither chronological nor based around the genres covered. Zheng notes that each chapter "brings into focus particular elements...