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Chinese America: The Untold Story of America's Oldest New Community
 
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Chinese America: The Untold Story of America's Oldest New Community [Hardcover]

Peter Kwong (Author), Dusanka Miscevic (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Book Description

October 20, 2005
A sweeping portrait of one of America's most distinctive communities from the bestselling author of The New Chinatown.

From award-winning author Peter Kwong and Dusanka Miscevic comes a definitive portrait of Chinese Americans, one of the oldest immigrant groups and fastest-growing communities in the United States. Beginning with stories of Chinese frontiersmen who came to the West Coast by the thousands in the mid-nineteenth century and continuing to the high-tech transnationals who have helped spark the development of today's booming Chinese American "ethnoburbs," this engrossing narrative recounts stories of extraordinary hardship, discrimination, and success.

Chinese America is a landmark analysis that draws on firsthand reporting in Asia and the US. Offering a new picture of the country's development, Kwong and Miscevic provide the first comprehensive report on the suburban immigrant communities that are transforming America. Urban ghettos continue to host some of the country's poorest immigrants, but Chinese Americans now live in the suburbs in similar proportions to whites—and have brought with them Chinese supermarket chains, language schools, and growing clout in America and Asia. Exploring the burgeoning trade—and underlying conflicts—between China and the US, Chinese America reveals the complex connections between immigration, globalization, and foreign policy in our time.


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Editorial Reviews

Review

One of the country's most esteemed scholars of Asian America...promises to be an exciting publishing event. -- Mike Wallace, co-author of Gotham

About the Author

Peter Kwong is the author of several books, including Chinatown, NY and Forbidden Workers. He is a professor of Urban Studies at Hunter College. Dusanka Miscevic is a writer and translator with a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Both live in New York City.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 496 pages
  • Publisher: New Press, The (October 20, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1565849620
  • ISBN-13: 978-1565849624
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,604,974 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary History of the Immigrant Experience, November 28, 2005
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This review is from: Chinese America: The Untold Story of America's Oldest New Community (Hardcover)
Every so often a history writer gets it right. This is just such a book...what extraordinary riches about the Chinese experience
such as the contrast between Uptown and Downtown Chinese, the building of Chinatowns throughout the United States, the contributions of Chinese doctors to the expansion of the West, the terrible experience of the Exclusion Act, the inroads into Hollywood. Consider that the idea of California as the vegetable capital of the United States was the result of innovative Chinese farmers who understood how to use water and irrigation techniques in the West. (They also used new water techniques to mine gold in the hills, creating "Chinese walls" of stones that can still be located in the Gold Country.) Never boring, this is a wonderful book for a gift. Highly recommended.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth reading, April 5, 2006
By 
Antero Pietila (Baltimore, MD, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Chinese America: The Untold Story of America's Oldest New Community (Hardcover)
"Chinese America" is a fabulous book chronicling a misunderstood ethnic group. Today's stereotype is that all Chinese Americans are wealthy overachievers. This book debunks that myth and is very good at explaining how it came about as a result of only professionals being admitted to the U.S. at a certain point and most of those professionals being the creme of the crop from Taiwan. This contrasts with the early immigration which came largely from the Hong Kong region and consisted of rural people so discriminated against that 60 percent of Chinese in New York City in the 1920s were engaged in the hand laundry business, not by choice but because of discrimination.
This is not an America-bashing book, not at all. It only retells a complex story that today is not widely understood.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A daring effort to cover the entire story, January 19, 2009
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G. Glick (Pittsburgh-born) - See all my reviews
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I am hard pressed to name any remotely comparable book covering the history of Chinese Americans. Most of the others either subscribe to the myth of the happy assimilationist Asian of mid-century or if they do, fail to address the true intra-community conflicts in recent history. This work is a true trail-blazer. Contrary to the implications of the one negative review this book provides an eye-opening and even-handed review of the real struggles in the Chinese community. Bravo!
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