Tara Fickle’s award-winning book, The Race Card, shows how video games contribute to discourses of race in the U.S. She complicates the usual arguments about games as spheres of empowerment and self-realization, revealing how gaming culture imposes a very specific and limiting role on Asian Americans within U.S. national culture. To make this argument, Fickle analyzes a variety of sources ranging from digital and analog games games to literary texts, marketing campaigns, archival material, and journalistic works. The Race Card won the 2020 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Interested in studying video games and their impact on culture? Check out one of Professor Fickle’s courses in English, IRES, and DH!