Yen Le Espiritu combines scholarship with personal experience in her writings about the Asian-American experience. A Vietnamese American whose husband is Filipino, Espiritu seeks to understand and to communicate through her writing the many facets of modern Asian experiences in the United States. She wrote. "I still find pan-Asian American ethnicity a complex and changing topic, often defying sociological interpretations and generalizations." Her objectives are to take seriously the differences among Asian groups without glossing over important ethnic differences. Espiritu's published books include Filipino American Lives, Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities,… and Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws and Love, in addition to articles in scholarly journals. Espiritu teaches in the Ethnic Studies program of the University of California, San Diego.