Dr. Wendy Cheng has found a way to combine her love for photography into her ongoing scholarship of tackling issues of racism and structural inequalities.
Cheng, an assistant professor of Asian American Pacific Studies and Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University, uses the lenses of the camera to “open eyes to the wider world” where ethnic studies and geography are part of the everyday landscape.
Cheng is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants who came to the United States for grad school but became activists for Taiwanese independence and were later blacklisted from returning to their country. She grew up in middle- and upper middle class, predominantly White communities in San Diego.
During her years as a graduate student, Cheng began to closely examine the intersection of issues such as race, class and space in American society. Her current research examines shifting demographics, particularly among people of color. Her 2013 book The Changs Next Door to the Díazes: Remapping Race in Suburban California won the 2014 Book Award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Asia and Asian America.
In The Changs Next Door to the Díazes, Cheng examines racial formation through the experiences and perspectives of residents of a majority non-White, multiracial suburb.
“My work looks at how people think and live in communities of color,” says Cheng. “There have always been communities where people live their lives not totally dictated by White dominance. These are multiracial spaces.”
Her first book, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles, was published by the University of California Press in 2012 and is coauthored with Laura Pulido and Laura Barraclough. It, too, has received accolades: the American Association of Geographers’ 2012 Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography and the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association’s 2012 Book Prize for Nonfiction.
