Flashpoints is must-read for scholars of critical ethnic studies, American studies and Asian American studies. Former president of the Association for Asian American Studies, Schlund-Vials has gathered a variety of thought-provoking and timely essays on the state of the field from leading scholars, artists and activists.

Although Flashpoints briefly describes the origins of the field, this collection does not rehearse the history and genealogy of Asian American studies. Instead, it considers – almost fifty years on – “the relevance of Asian American studies in the contemporary political moment” (3). Branching outward from the field's roots in mid-century political movements, this volume's contents highlight a shift in Asian American studies toward transnational and diasporic inquiry, as well as human rights engagements and, perhaps most importantly, reflection on the shortcomings of the field in light of present-day circumstances. In so doing, Flashpoints critically examines the ways in which the field has both responded to and, in some cases, remained silent regarding various crises, with particular attention to the current wave of exclusionary politics in the United States, including neoliberal practices in higher education and ever-expanding militarized engagements abroad (2).

With an eye toward the possible outcomes of the current political and social climate, Schlund-Vials deploys the term “flashpoint” as an indication of the extent to which Asian American studies may seem like an established, even august, discipline, but is in truth not merely dynamic, but necessarily and productively contentious. In so doing, her aim and the aim of her fellow contributors is to provoke an engagement that extends beyond intellectual abstraction: “a flashpoint demands – in the face of political calamity and systemic oppression – reflection, response, and recalibration” (2). With this in mind, Schlund-Vials points both to the successes and to the failures that Asian American studies has accrued with respect to human rights campaigns and social-justice movements: e.g. Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, Selma to Ferguson; the black liberation movement of the 1970s to the present day Black Lives Matter movement, global liberation efforts, and boycotts over Palestinian rights.

The volume groups its essays under four themes: “Ethnic Studies Revisited,” “Displaced Subjects,” “Remapping Asia, Recalibrating Asian America” and “Toward an Asian American Ethic of Care.” The essays in each section cohere thematically, and all exemplify scholarly methods that are both imaginative and rigorous.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of this volume, however, is the underlying challenge it poses. Flashpoints invokes earlier calls by scholars of Asian American studies to reconsider the usefulness of single-identarian paradigms, including Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong's Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance (1993), Kandice Chuh's Imagine Otherwise: On Asian Americanist Critique (2003) and Gary Okihiro's Third World Studies: Theorizing Liberation (2016). Throughout the volume, authors challenge the reader to pursue this task alongside institutional questions of ethnic studies subfields within colleges and universities. There is, for instance, an expectation on many campuses that Asian American studies faculty must justify their existence while simultaneously standing in for any number of so-called “diversity” initiatives. With neoliberal metrics holding sway over most campus decisions, Asian American studies, Latinx studies and Native and Indigenous studies programs also face increasing pressure to consolidate, with little thought given to the impact of such initiatives on those programs.

In the face of such pressures, contributors to this volume argue, Asian American studies scholars must continue to recognize the value of “think[ing] intersectionally and act[ing] collaboratively” with regard to ethnicity, race, sexuality and gender (78). At its heart, the result is a volume that demonstrates in complex, often discomforting, but consistently productive ways that Asian American studies is neither a stable, unified field of inquiry nor some ivory-tower abstraction. Rather, it is thoroughly entangled in contemporary political and cultural circumstances. Consequently, the volume suggests, that entanglement should also be both conscious and explicit, but also synthetic and responsive to specific sociopolitical issues rather than generalized notions of identity (49).

The result for many readers may be discomforting, but that is the point of this volume. Asian American studies may look like an established field with discrete methods and practices, but it is in truth a field marked by innumerable flashpoints. It is those flashpoints that lend the field both its vitality and its reason for existence in the first place. Hence the suggestion that this volume is a must-read: it could reshape how we approach our calling, not just our subject.