Skip to main contentEmma Lazarus' sentiments aside, immigrants have seldom been welcomed with open arms in America, though over time the painful struggles in the Bowery and on Hester Street among the tired and poor finally became mythic and worthy of national pride. But as Iris Chang points out in her new book, The Chinese in America, the U.S. still hasn't gotten around to honoring the immigrants who came from China, who created their own Hester Streets in San Francisco, Seattle and Portland. In fact, it's only very recently that these Americans have been considered fellow Americans at all.
Chang's book, which she subtitles "a narrative history," finally gives the Chinese-American community its due by structuring the story on the words of hundreds of forgotten immigrants. It's a powerful book that leaves one breathless at times by the ignorance and barbarity of white American culture and law, twin evils that Chang reveals are still present, though their power, happily, has slackened.
Chang begins her epic narrative with a brief abstract on China and conditions under the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). She then moves east with the first immigrants, primarily men, who go to seek their fortunes in "Gold Mountain," as the Chinese called California for obvious reasons. Though the first Chinese to arrive were considered oddities and left fairly unmolested by the white majority, the arrival of more Chinese set in place a level of fear and hostility that still informs contemporary culture.
The treatment meted out to the Chinese rivals the worst racist behavior in American history (in some jurisdictions, the Chinese were considered the same as blacks). Chinese prospectors were violently removed from their stakes and robbed, occasionally murdered under the law's nose (one of the worst massacres occurred in Robinson Gulch, Ore., in 1887). Meanwhile, the western half of the transcontinental railroad might not have been completed in time had not hundreds of Chinese-American men toiled, sometimes to death, to build it. Regardless of their effort, they were purposely excluded from all the historic photographs of the "Golden Spike" meeting of the two tracks in 1869.
Forbidden to vote, attend public schools or be admitted to hospitals, the Chinese were locked in a struggle, Chang shows, that was instrumental in laying some of the groundwork for the greater civil-rights movements to come. It wasn't until World War II that the Chinese began to receive more rights, though they still were made to feel like outsiders in their own country, a condition that still prevails: "At the 1998 Olympics, when U.S. figure skater Michelle Kwan finished second after her teammate Tara Lipinski, the headlines on MSNBC read, 'American beats Kwan.'"
Chang writes in a strong, engaging style, and provides many interesting asides, from the birth of chop suey to the fact that the famed "Siamese" twins, Chang and Eng, became slaveholders in North Carolina.
America is the sum of its parts. The Chinese part has now found a worthy advocate in Chang.
by Iris Chang
(Viking, 496 pages, $29.95)
Iris Chang will read at Powell's City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm Thursday, May 22.
WWeek 2015