The Chinese in America: A Narrative History [Paperback]

Iris Chang (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0142004170 | ISBN-13: 978-0142004173

In an epic story that spans 150 years and continues to the present day, Iris Chang tells of a people’s search for a better life—the determination of the Chinese to forge an identity and a destiny in a strange land and, often against great obstacles, to find success. She chronicles the many accomplishments in America of Chinese immigrants and their descendents: building the infrastructure of their adopted country, fighting racist and exclusionary laws, walking the racial tightrope between black and white, contributing to major scientific and technological advances, expanding the literary canon, and influencing the way we think about racial and ethnic groups. Interweaving political, social, economic, and cultural history, as well as the stories of individuals, Chang offers a bracing view not only of what it means to be Chinese American, but also of what it is to be American.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers 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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Chang is the author of the best-selling Rape of Nanking (1997), a very disturbing but well-prepared and necessary account of the sacking of that important Chinese city by the Japanese army in the late 1930s. Her writerly acumen is again in evidence in her latest book, which, in her words, tells an epic story--and, indeed, it is shown to be exactly that. Her purview is wide: the immigration of Chinese people to the U.S. from the early nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth. Chinese immigration falls naturally into three waves: those who came here to be laborers during the days of the California gold rush and the building of the transcontinental railroad, those who came to escape the 1949 Communist takeover, and those who came in the 1980s and 1990s as relations between China and the U.S. eased somewhat. The reasons why the Chinese came to the U.S. are only half the story; the other half consists of what they did here and how they were received. But this is not just a bland narration of events. Chang threads personal stories of individuals she came across in her research into her book, making it a much more human account. A final chapter looks at possible future definitions of racial identity. This is history at its most dramatic and relevant, and the book deserves all the attention it undoubtedly will receive. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (March 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142004170
• ISBN-13: 978-0142004173
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #73,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Iris Chang lived and worked in California. She was a journalism graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana and worked briefly as a reporter in Chicago before winning a graduate fellowship to the writing seminars program at The Johns Hopkins University. Her first book, Thread of the Silkworm (the story of Tsien Hsue-shen, father of the People's Republic of China's missile program) received world-wide critical acclaim. She is the recipient of the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation's Program on Peace and International Cooperation award, as well as major grants from the National Science Foundation, the Pacific Cultural Foundation, and the Harry Truman Library. She passed away in 2004.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Flawed, but informative, August 16, 2004

By 

N. Visalvanich "neil-v" (Santa Barbara, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Chinese in America: A Narrative History (Paperback)

Iris Chang's "The Chinese In America: A Narrative History" may not be the first book about Chinese immigrants in America, but it is perhaps the most reader accesible. There is no doubt that Chang's prose makes the book not only easy to read, but also incredibly easy to grasp - a quality which makes it in some ways superior to the acedemic jargon that plauges most ethno-scoholarly works.

But at what point do things become over simplified? At what point is it too regressive?

Chang's thesis is a simple one - that the Chinese in America have lived in a cyclical state of love and hate. While the Chinese are admired for their hard work ethic and their entrepuenuership, they are also consistently chastised as being outsiders and have at times, become convienient scapegoats at the whims of the frustrations of the larger American public. Chang seeks to illustrate this dynamic with a variety of historical examples, from the days of the California Gold Rush to the recent Wen Ho Lee affair. Chang makes a compelling argument - there is no doubt that the Chinese in America have suffered at the hands of racial oppressors, much like other minority races and ethnicities in America. The Wen Ho Lee case, in particular, is a sobering reminder that the image of the accepted model minority is very easily retracted, especially when it comes at the conviencience of people like Rep. Chistopher Cox (R-CA), a leader among anti-Chinese conspiracy theorists.

There is no doubt of Chang's bias. Like her previous work, "The Rape of Nanking," Chang is deeply personally invested in this book. Whether or not this detracts from her credibilty as a writer is up to you. I personally found most of her analyses truthful, but her one-sidedness will inevitably turn many off.

Which leads me to my main critisism of the book - the regressivism. Chang, at times, devolves race relations in America to be "Asian vs. White," which seems to me to be too simplistic for such a complicated topic. In addition, it risks putting her readers on the defensive, a mistake when you're trying to inform others of a topic that you're passionate about. There is no doubt that Chang wants to write for everybody, but her tone narrows her audience to just those who agree with her, and risks alienating those who are on the fence. In this respect, I think she should've done better.

"The Rape of Nanking" was akin in style to this - passionate and at times angry. But the instance of that book, anger is understandable. "The Chinese In America" requires a different tone and a different outlook.

As an Asian-American with Chinese origins, I found Chang's book to be informative and sobering. I would reccomend it to those who seek an expanded history of something that's not taught in the history books. It may be flawed, but it is still worth the read.

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cant put it down, August 13, 2003

By 

Jimmy Yeh (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Chinese in America: A Narrative History (Hardcover)

Iris Chang certainly did her research as evidenced by her profuse footnotes and references. Not only is her book well researched, it is well written. Chang, coming from a journalist background, really knows how to make it concise while at the same time giving it lots of emotion.

The book begins around the railroad era and ends with the Wen Ho Lee scandal. She ends with a very pertinent one: the history will never be complete.

Just by reading this nonfiction book, I think it gives a better representation of what it means to grow up in America as a Chinese as opposed to Amy Tan's writing.

She emphasizes that Asians ARE discriminated against, contrary to popular opinion.

Amy Tan's writing is more a story of assimiliation of two cultures: American and Chinese.

107 of 127 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written; occasionally biased., May 21, 2004

By 

M. H Shamp (Columbia Falls, MT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Chinese in America: A Narrative History (Paperback)

Before I start commenting on this book, let me mention my own background: I came to America from Hong Kong when I was 18, and only recently became a naturalized American citizen. I have lived in America for 15 years.

I came across The Chinese In America first because a white friend who adopted a Chinese girl recommended the book to me. Since I have little interest in history, I was reluctant to read it at first; but a few pages later I was engrossed by the book. In history classes in college I learned a little bit about the Chinese building rail roads and the Exclusion Act, but not much more. This book gave much more detail and is so well written that I had no trouble reading it to the end. I am sure my being Chinese helped spark the interest in a subject I normally don't care about. When I was done, I was so impressed with the book that I ordered a copy from amazon.com so that my kids can read it when they grow up.

I think most of the book is accurate, but there are some errors. For example, the book mentioned the Imperial Examination in China as being initiated by the Ching (Manchurian) emperors. I am quite certain that's not true. That Exam's been around for thousands of years, as a lot of ancient literature mention it, such as the famed Journey to the West, whose background was set back in the Tang Dynasty. Ms. Chang's point was that the Manchurians used the Imperial Exams to control the Chinese people, and her attitude towards them is clearly hostile. But the Manchurians are also considered Chinese these days, so it seems ludicrous that a historian should be incensed about a 400 year old injury.

Throughout the book, Ms. Chang's sense of hostility towards the non-Chinese Americans (meaning white) is quite apparent, and her emphasis is always on the prejudice and suppression of the Chinese American. Her sense of resentment becomes blatant as her time frame draws to the modern day for which I also have personal experience. The prejudicial practices she describes are at best frivolous and ambiguous, and when you really think about it, you realize they are merely daily difficulties that every race faces in this country, or any other country. In my personal experience, during the last 15 years in America, I cannot think of a single incidence I experienced that can be classified as "prejudice." I have met jerks in this country, no doubt; but they were jerks just because that's who they are, not because of me. I have never had any conclusive evidence demonstrating that someone mistreated me just because of my skin color. I think if anything, the Americans think overly highly of the Chinese. I have heard so many times the statement "Chinese people are so smart," a statement I know to be not always true. There are plenty of idiots in China too, just like any other country.

Despite all the faults, this book is fast paced, fact-filled and engrossing, unlike the dreary history books I ploughed through in school. I want my kids to know the history of the Chinese Americans, and also to learn how not to have a victim mentality that this book demonstrates. I think every Chinese American should read it to learn about what happened to the Chinese people who came here before them. And even if you are not Chinese, you will still find this book difficult to put down. It will definitely provide a glimpse of the mentality of Chinese and other minority groups in this country. A good, interesting history book is hard to find, and Ms Chang is very definitely gifted in writing.