From the book description of Resisting Change in Suburbia: Asian Immigrants and Frontier Nostalgia in L.A.: Between the 1980s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, Asian Americans in Los Angeles moved toward becoming a racial majority in the communities of the East San Gabriel Valley. By the late 1990s, their "model minority" status resulted in greater influence in local culture, neighborhood politics, and policies regarding the use of suburban space. In the "country living" subdivisions, which featured symbols of Western agrarianism including horse trails, ranch fencing, and Spanish colonial architecture, white homeowners encouraged assimilation and enacted policies suppressing unwanted "changes"—that is, increased density and influence of Asian culture. While some Asian suburbanites challenged whites' concerns, many others did not. Rather, white critics found support from affluent Asian homeowners who also wished to protect their class privilege and suburbia's conservative Anglocentric milieu. In Resisting Change in Suburbia, award-winning historian James Zarsadiaz explains how myths of suburbia, the American West, and the American Dream informed regional planning, suburban design, and ideas about race and belonging.

James Zarsadiaz is Associate Professor of History and serves as Director of the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. His first book, Resisting Change in Suburbia: Asian Immigrants and Frontier Nostalgia in L.A., comes out October 2022 with University of California Press. He is also the author of numerous articles including "Design Assimilation in Suburbia: Asian Americans, Built Landscapes, and Suburban Advantage in Los Angeles's San Gabriel Valley since 1970," (co-authored with Becky Nicolaides) published in the Journal of Urban History (2015) and winner of the Urban History Association's Arnold Hirsch Award and Vernacular Architecture Forum's Catherine W. Bishir Prize; "Raising Hell in the Heartland: Filipino Chicago and the Anti-Martial Law Movement, 1972-1986," published in American Studies (2017); and “Methodists against Martial Law: Filipino Chicagoans and the Church’s Role in a Global Crusade,” published in Alon: Journal for Filipinx American and Diasporic Studies (2021). James holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in History from Northwestern University, and a B.A. in American Studies and Political Science from George Washington University. He was previously a fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History and Asian Pacific American Center.

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