This book starts with a mystery. Even though the children of Buddhist American converts likely outnumber their parents, neither Buddhist practitioners nor academics have discussed the experiences of second-generation Buddhists in the United States. Why this absence of ink? Why are second-generation Buddhist Americans invisible?
Drew Baker addresses these questions by reconstructing the cultural history of Buddhist American converts and their children from the 1950s to the present. This study covers a wide range of popular narratives—including Jack Kerouac’s novels, parenting manuals, films like Little Buddha, and essays and autobiographies by second-generation Buddhist Americans.
This cultural history reveals that white Buddhist American converts’ power and visibility has been reinforced by the Orientalist idea of the monk-convert lineage which presents the convert—represented as a free white young adult—as the sole heroic incarnation of the present and future of Buddhism in the modern world. The children of these converts are invisible under this paradigm. By considering their stories, Baker demonstrates that the converts’ children cultivate strategies that invoke the authority of their parents against itself so that they might be recognized as true Buddhist Americans. The children are here to claim their inheritance.
