The Chinese in America: A Narrative History

by Iris Chang | Nonfiction |
ISBN: 0142004170 Global Overview for this book
Registered by rebeccalyr of Austin, Texas USA on 3/28/2005
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1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by rebeccalyr from Austin, Texas USA on Monday, March 28, 2005

Registered as part of the Race to Two Million Challenge.



I'm only about 200 pages into this book but it is very interesting. It's an eyeopener into the hidden prejudices we have about people not born in the US, or even those born here that don't look like us. I don't usually read history books but this is a very readable format.

I read Amy Tan's The Opposite of Fate at the same time, and I recommend the dual reading. Chang provides a general history of our country, Tan provides a very specific history.


From Publisher's Weekly:

In this outstanding study of the Chinese-American community, the author surpasses even the high level of her bestselling Rape of Nanking. The first significant Chinese immigration to the United States came in the 1850s, when refugees from the Taiping War and rural poverty heard of "the Golden Mountain" across the Pacific. They reached California, and few returned home, but the universally acknowledged hard work of those who stayed and survived founded a great deal more than the restaurants and laundries that formed the commercial core-they founded a new community. Chinese immigrants building the Central Pacific Railroad used their knowledge of explosives to excavate tunnels (and discourage Irish harassment). Chinese workers also married within the Irish community, spread across America and survived even the racist Chinese Exclusion Act of 1880, which lost much of its impact when San Francisco's birth records were destroyed in the earthquake and fire of 1906 and no one could prove that a person of Chinese descent was not native born. Chang finds 20th-century Chinese-Americans navigating a rocky road between identity and assimilation, surviving new waves of immigrants from a troubled China and more recently from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Many Chinese millionaires maintain homes on both sides of the Pacific, while "parachute children" (Chinese teenagers living independently in America) are a significant phenomenon. And plain old-fashioned racism is not dead-Jerry Yang founded Yahoo!, but scientist Wen Ho Lee was, according to Chang, persecuted as much for being Chinese as for anything else. Chang's even, nuanced and expertly researched narrative evinces deep admiration for Chinese America, with good reason.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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