Mapping Asiatown Cleveland: Race and Redevelopment in the Rust Belt

Cleveland, Ohio is not a location that most people associate with Asian American placemaking. However, on Cleveland’s East Side, multigenerational and panethnic Asian American residents and business owners are building community in the AsiaTown neighborhood. Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland foregrounds the importance of region in racial formation and redevelopment as it traces the history of racial segregation and neighborhood diversity.

Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland challenges ideas about the invisibility of Asian Americans in the urban Midwest by linking the contemporary development of Cleveland’s ＂AsiaTown＂ to the multiple and fragmented histories of Cleveland’s Asian American communities from the 1940s to present day. Kinney’s sharp insights illustrate how region matters for Japanese Americans who resettled from concentration camps and Chinese Americans food purveyors, as well as the ways in which Asian American community leaders have had to fight for visibility and representation in city planning--even as the Cleveland Asian Festival is branded as a marquee ＂diversity＂ event for the city.

Mapping AsiaTown Cleveland recognizes the vibrant Asian American community formations and belonging that have developed in seemingly unexpected spaces and places.

In the series Asian American History and Culture

Rebecca Jo Kinney is Associate Professor in the School of Cultural and Critical Studies at Bowling Green State University. She is the author of Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit as America’s Postindustrial Frontier, which won the 2018 Humanities Research Transdisciplinary Book Award as well as the Midwest Popular Culture and American Culture Association’s Best Single Work.