The Chinese in America: A Narrative History by Iris Chang

The Chinese in America: A Narrative History Reviews

• 
  Zach Zhao

  Reading this book breaks my heart. As someone who was born in China and has spent the last four years in an American university, I can truly appreciate the stories that Iris Chang was telling in this book. Some of the stories happened in the distant past, yet somehow they still feel so familiar, the wounds so raw and the sufferings so personal. What this book managed to construct is the complex and diverse history of a group of people, who despite such complexity and diversity ultimately pursue the same dream: to make a better life for themselves and for their families. And the foreign land where they imagined their dreams would finally be fulfilled is also the same land where their dreams eventually get dashed, at least for some of them, at least for many of them.
  
  The Gold Rush. The Transcontinental Railway. The Chinese Exclusion Act. The often bloody history of American Chinatowns. The "Model Minority". Behind each and every one of them are names that I could not forget - they are the names of pioneers, heroes and victims, they are the names of many people who came before me so that my own dream of making a better life will somehow become more likely to come true.
  
  And then, like any story in history, there are always those whose names will never be recorded or remembered. Nameless lives. Nameless dreams. Nameless deaths. It is to these people that this book pays its ultimate tribute - an ode to their lives, a song to their dreams, a psalm to their deaths, which will never be in vain and which shall never be forgotten.
• 
  Staci Woodburn-Henry

  This was such an interesting book and I really enjoyed reading it. It broke my heart to learn so much about people who have suffered so much. It focused on Chinese Americans and Taiwanese Americans primarily, but gives insight into the plight of all peoples who come from depressed or corrupt countries looking for something better for their families only to be greeted with jeers of "get back on the boat" and laws that prevent them from ever living the American Dream.
  
  I gave it three stars primarily because the author is so pro-Chinese. There is a palpable anti-Taiwan bias that as trained historian (albeit a grad-school dropout) I can't accept wholeheartedly, but that did not take away from the overall experience of reading this book.
• 
  Marie Hew

  I bought this book shortly after it was published in 2003. I even went to a reading by Iris Chang and got her to autograph it along with my copy of The Rape of Nanking. I shelved it and hadn't touched it since. I thought I knew all about the major events and themes of Chinese American history. I wasn't so interested in reading another rendition of gold miner struggles and exploitation of Chinese laborers on the railroad.
  
  I was wrong. I really enjoyed how Chang wove together a continuous narrative of the first Chinese who came to America during the Gold Rush and more recently the geeks of the technological boom years. Intermittently she also inserts anecdotes from her own family to give a personal touch and flush out the diversity of the Chinese in America yesterday, today and beyond. The most valuable sections of the book tells the story of the Chinese from the post-1965 era. Chang could have easily written her book exclusively from that point on, but going back to the beginning helps put our history in context of the big picture of Chinese America and the mainstream national narrative. If anything, reading this book gave me a greater appreciation and connection to the Chinese who came before me and those who will continue to arrive in years to come.
  
  Such a shame Chang is no longer here to enlighten us with her research and proses.
• 
  christine

  Iris and her parents were family friends of my parents. My parents and their peers are documented in Chapter 15 and several others in this book in the 2nd wave of Chinese immigration to the U.S. This book was an excellent book - an easy read for anyone interested in the very different waves of Chinese immmigration to the U.S. and where we all ended up.
• 
  Matthew

  As good as the author's book on Nanking. Comprehensive, but full of individual anecdotes, too.
• 
  Christopher Saunders

  Panoramic narrative of Chinese American immigration and settlement from the 19th Century to the present. Chang (The Rape of Nanking) shows the earliest major wave of Chinese immigration in the 1840s, in response both to political unrest at home and a hope of striking it rich in the California Gold Rush. Like most immigrants from everywhere, the Chinese entertained fantastic visions of America as a Land of Opportunity, belied by the squalid reality. From the start, Chinese Americans faced racism, from beatings and lynchings to harsh immigration laws and full-on pogroms; companies and elites exploited men for cheap menial labor and women as prostitutes and sex slaves, which in turn fanned working class resentment of Chinese "stealing" American jobs and corrupting them with disease and foreign ideology. Nevertheless, the Chinese Americans persisted, finding ways to assert their independence: proving their mettle as laborers on the Union Pacific, establishing niches in small businesses (Chang spends much time charting the rise of Chinese laundries and restaurants) and engaging in political and legal activism that overturned the strictest of anti-Chinese laws - a legacy which allowed their descendants to excel in a variety of diverse fields (from I.M. Pei and Jerry Yang to Anna May Wong, Gary Locke and Amy Tan). Despite this, the bigotry merely took other forms: Chinese drawn to America by a promise of education found professional opportunities limited (being denied management positions, for instance, in corporations and tech companies) and themselves suspect as potential spies or generally "un-American" (Chang revisits the story of Tsien Hsue-shen, the rocket scientist deported on false charges of espionage, only to develop China's missile program, which she chronicled at book-length in Thread of the Silkworm). Chang shows the double-edged sword of Chinese American identity: hard-working, proud of their accomplishments and heritage, but pigeonholed by "Model Minority" stereotypes perpetrated by a white-dominated society that still denies their individuality and rarely treats them as full equals. A remarkable, important blend of history and sociology.
• 
  Scott

  Being four generations removed from my ancestral homeland of the Guangdong (Canton) province in South China, it's difficult to relate to some of my Chinese heritage. I would often joke that my Caucasian roommate in college was in many ways more Chinese than me. And while I have a list of several things I'd like to do to reconnect with my roots: learn basic Chinese, visit my ancestral village, etc., I found that reading "The Chinese in America" has been an excellent launching point for learning where I came from and how I ended up here.
  
  Tracing the history of the Chinese in America from the Gold Rush to today, Chang writes in an engaging fashion that relates so closely with many of my family's experiences.
  
  As I read, I thought about my great-grandparents who immigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area via the infamous Angel Island "immigration station", settling down and starting a restaurant. I thought about their children, which included my grandmother, the first generation born in America. Many of my grand aunts and uncles worked tirelessly at the restaurant and undoubtedly struggled at times socially with their identity as Americans under the care of Chinese immigrant parents.
  
  I thought of my paternal grandfather who served admirably in the Army during World War II, in Japan of all places, where anti-Japanese hostility and racism could have easily gotten him mistaken for the enemy. He served his country with pride and was discharged at the conclusion of the war with multiple honors and a purple heart.
  
  I thought of my maternal grandparents who ran a store in San Francisco. Though racial tensions were at a high, and anti-Japanese sentiment were prevalent both among Americans and Chinese, my grandparents never ever mistreated or refused a Japanese customer, or a customer of any ethnicity.
  
  And I thought of me, a 4th (or 3rd?) generation American-born Chinese. As an engineer living in the Bay Area, how will my story fit into this narrative?
  
  I appreciated the fact that Chang also writes about what was happening elsewhere in the world. Because anthropology, especially Chinese anthropology, is so global, Chang does well to show the ripples world events made in the migration of the Chinese to America, and in turn, the ripples Chinese immigration in America made throughout the world.
  
  On a less positive note, Chang frequently notes about the acts of racism and injustice committed against the Chinese. From the very first settlers during the Gold Rush to today, racism in some form has always existed. It's a true, but painful conclusion to such a rich narrative, but it shows that while Chinese-American relations have come a long way, there is still so far to go.
• 
  Tsuiyuan Huang

  I got this book from the library this summer. It has 400 pages plus another 100 pages of references. But it was easy reading. I like how Chang correlates the timelines of events in China and U.S. I particularly like reading the anecdotes, some amusing and many heartbreaking. A very well researched history book and a captivating read. I give it 5 stars.
• 
  Wendy

  Finished this book over vacation - amazing from beginning to end. Chang's ability to connect broad sweeps of history, both domestic and abroad, to individual vignettes is really impressive.
• 
  tinabot

  Great book! It's unfortunate the author is no longer living. I would have liked to meet her.
  
  From my review of this book:
  
  http://www.8asians.com/2011/12/20/mis...
  
  Iris Chang’s book The Chinese in America is one of the very few books that chronicles a major Asian American community, the Chinese Americans. Of course, no one book could fully capture the incredible diversity of the Chinese American category and all the people who populate (or are made to populate) it, but this book definitely does a great job of covering most of that diversity as well as filling a gaping hole in American history and collective consciousness.
  
  Nevertheless, I was a little surprised to find how unrepresented I was in this book. Let me explain. I’m Taiwanese American, which means I’m of “ethnic” Chinese heritage (whatever that means), and my ancestors have been born in Taiwan for about six generations back. A quick glance of the table of contents of the book shows that Chang has all of Chapter 16 dedicated to the Taiwanese Americans, so it would seem that my little nook of Chinese America is nicely explored in the book. Unfortunately, it is not.
  
  Although Chapter 16 focuses primarily on Taiwanese Americans, it really only focuses on one particular group of Taiwanese Americans–the ones who left China to escape Communist rule by going to Taiwan and then left for the United States after that. They’re characterized as more highly educated and more well-off, and even if they lost everything in the move from China to Taiwan, they had more socio-political and intellectual capital than the country bumpkin Chinese ethnics or indigenous peoples that were already on the slow-paced, agrarian island before their arrival. As it always is in history, the natives were oppressed by the newcomers.
  
  The oppressed would be my ancestors. (To be fair, when my ancestors arrived on Taiwan, they were the oppressors of the indigenous natives.)
  
  My grandparents were subjects of the Japanese empire when Taiwan was a Japanese territory (won from China), and they were more fluent in the Japanese language than Taiwanese (Minan) or Mandarin Chinese. Then when the flight of the Chinese from communist China came after World War II, my parents were the ones who grew up under a totalitarian Kuo Min Tang regime who mass murdered dissidents and indoctrinated the local children to not speak anything but Mandarin Chinese and to praise Chiang Kai Shek and Sun Yat Sen as their saviors and political gods.
  
  The kicking out of the Republic of China from the United Nations and Jimmy Carter’s US recognition of the People’s Republic of China as a legitimate ruling government of China was the impetus for my family to move to the United States.
  
  So that brings us to me, the Taiwanese American that does not have super educated parents who came as intellectuals or professors or high level engineers, doctors, scientists and knowledge workers. My parents are the quintessential American small business owners, very mom and pop. I’m the Taiwanese American that speaks Taiwanese (Minan) at home and didn’t learn Mandarin Chinese fluently until college. I’m the Taiwanese American that doesn’t have stories of how my family fled China and the Communists but instead my childhood was full of stories of how my predecessors were brutalized and ruled over by the Kuo Min Tang instead, how my parents wore signs at school that said “I was bad because I spoke Taiwanese”.
  
  I’m a huge fan of Iris Chang’s work, having read both this book and the Rape of Nanking when it came out in 1997. While reading The Chinese in America, I was elated to learn how integral the Chinese American history was to the American history and heartbroken to see again and again those accomplishments and contributions to this great nation never recognized as American at the core. When I got to that Taiwanese American chapter, I was on the edge of my seat, thinking “Here’s my part!”, but in all honesty I was disappointed to see that the particular and substantial Taiwanese American community that I belonged to was barely referenced at all in a chapter dedicated to Taiwanese Americans. We got swallowed up in a bigger majority group that dominated socially, politically, culturally and intellectually.
  
  Also, I felt there was also a missing chapter about the Chinese in America hailing from other continents and countries. In my own personal experience and life, I’m always interacting with ethnic Chinese who are here in America after their families had spent a substantial amount of time in another country such as South East Asian countries, other East Asian countries, and South America. There are so many Americans that are ethnic Chinese who came from Korea, Japan, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brazil…basically my friends and neighbors. I think as a Taiwanese American who came from generations of ethnic Chinese who lived in Taiwan, I’m part of that group of ethnic Chinese who left China generations earlier and then made it to America in subsequent generations. It’s my impression of Chang’s book that it focuses most heavily on the Chinese that came more directly to America from China, neglecting this whole other alternate stream of Chinese Americans that I think has made a substantial addition to the American population, mainly because I’m surrounded by them everyday.
  
  This is my reading of the book, and of course, if Chang was still with us today, I think she would appreciate such feedback, and being the amazing writer and scholar she was, would have come out with a new edition that better addressed these gaps. It is our great loss that she is no longer with us, but I definitely cherish and honor what she has done, digging out the bloodied bricks of the past and building a monument of our heritage to remind us of where we all come from. The cost of her efforts were excruciatingly high, as she exchanged her soul and lifeblood for the dark pieces of history she revitalized for us. For me, I know she has indeed made a priceless contribution to my identity and who I will become in the future. R.I.P. Iris Chang 3/28/68 – 11/9/04.
• 
  Kevin

  What struck me most about this book was the degree to which the Chinese have been and still are an extreme minority in America. Thus, I think, the difficulty of carving out a distinct “Chinese American” identity, as narratives and perceptions are so strongly defined by the broader histories and cultures of the much larger and much more powerful forces of China and America themselves. And the difficulty of living that identity, being constantly pulled back and forth by those two forces, whether we like it or not.
• 
  Camellia Schwartzman

  I read this book for my nonfiction English book project. I am currently finishing the project by creating a scrapbook. I think the book has opened my eyes to many awful events and it is very well informed. What I found to be the most depressing is Iris’s own life story. I actually listened to a talk she gave on YouTube from 2003 and wondered why she hadn’t written anything new or spoken out any time recently. Then I did some extra research and it changed my perspective while I was in the end of the book.
• 
  Stephen

  Like most Americans, my earliest notion of the Chinese in America is an association with the Transcontinental railroad. As it happened, their story begins before that, with the California gold rush. Poor Chinese men, having caught wind of the bonanza in California, made their way to "Gold Mountain" in hopes of making a fortune and returning to China with it. While many hit the jackpot and returned, still others made another home in America, becoming actors in its story. In The Chinese in America, Iris Chang superbly runs together three threads: a history of China, as the decline of the last empire and the resulting civil strife (including war) created a need for opportunities and safety to be found abroad; the history of the United States, lassoing in the West and needing all the railroad men, miners, and farmers it could get; and the story of the generations who traveled from one nation to the other, attempting to adjust to a new country without losing their heritage. It is an admirable story of perseverance amid bewilderment and hardship.
  
  The earliest Chinese visitors to the United States came not to flee wicked oppression in China, but to make money on Gold Mountain and go home rich men. A few did strike it lucky and retire wealthy, but many more stayed. Although most of the Chinese who settled in the United States remained on the west coast, not all congregated in urban Chinatowns. They searched for opportunity wherever it might be found; working farms and ranches, mines and railroads, and - occasionally -- even finding their way to New England and the South. There, despite racially-orientated legislation, they found tacit acceptance, safe in their ambiguous status. That changed in the 1870s, when a depression set teeth on edge and prompted unemployed laborers to blame the cheap labor flooding in from the East. The Chinese Exclusion Act followed, barring most immigration from Asia. Strict quotas were imposed, and only certain professions were entirely welcome. The Exclusion act would hold until the 1940s, when the United States and the Chinese people became allies, both targets of Japanese imperialism. (Shortly after World War 2, racial limitations on immigration were ended altogether. even as the war and those which followed generated anti-Asian prejudice) As one generation pushed the frontier by breaching the Rocky Mountains, linking the coasts and allowing agriculture to prosper in the west, another stretched it still further in aviation and software engineering. Chang doesn't limit herself to politics and economics; a strong reliance on oral history imparts a good dose of social history, as well, like the evolution of "Chinese" food.
  
  The Chinese-American story is not one I have any experience with -- the South's Asian population is predominately Korean and Vietnamese, at least in my neck of the woods. What little I knew came from histories of San Francisco (particularly Good Life in Hard Times, with a section on Chinese gangs). This was, then, a welcome introduction to another aspect of America's mosaic.
  
• 
  biscuit

  This book provides a good primer for such a broad and complex topic. Not unlike Zinn's "A People's History"in structure, this book looks at the intertwining history of China and the United States and the evolution of the Chinese American but is less dense in its material and focuses more on individual stories and accounts to punctuate the times and experiences of Chinese Americans.
  
  For its size, it is a surprisingly quick read. The writing is easy to follow and colloquial in its tone. Chang's passion for the topic is obvious. Sometimes, especially as the history moves towards contemporary times, Chang's voice becomes much stronger in her assessments which marks her biases more apparent. Near the end, I felt that her opinion was a little too black and white. However Chang doesn't pretend to be an unbiased historian, or any kind of historian for that matter. Her other book, "The Rape of Nanking", is also heavily biased in its retelling of the under-represented side of WWII. She is a journalist telling a story and adding her voice to an active dialog about and bringing attention to systemic racial and social injustice.
  
  Throughout the entire book, it was difficult to not remember her death. Her strong voice makes it hard to forget how she chose to end her life, which occurred the year after this book was originally published, and the same year it came out in paperback. It is particularly sad to read the last chapter about the possible future of Asian Americans and her thoughtful acknowledgments knowing this.
  
  Overall, the book is definitely worth reading— a good starting point for more refined inquiry and a good general overview of a minority generally ignored by mainstream media.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Liz

  Chang's expansive history of Chinese-Americans and their American history is an essential book, beautifully researched and written and gives a strong voice to the Chinese narrative in the United States. From before Gold Mountain until the technological dot-com bubble, Chang traces how the ambitions, fears, lives, and deaths of Chinese immigrants and their descendants are woven into the very fabric of American society and geography. She sheds light on the persecution of Chinese-Americans and illustrates the precarious position they have always been forced to live in here - caught between the black-white divide of America, Chinese-Americans have been both 'honorary whites' and despised 'coolies' that have been eagerly used for their intellectual capabilities and work ethic but simultaneously mistrusted as 'foreigners' and degraded as dogsbodies. Ambitious breadth paired with intimate detailing makes Chang's history a beautiful achievement and tribute to her community, and is required reading for those interested in actual American history. Highly recommended.
• 
  Jaybird Rex

  A couple years back, having read Chang's Rape of Nanking, and having freshly moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, this one was on my short list. The first half of the book is a fascinating ride through largely-unknown parts of American history. Chang's writing makes for an effortless, page-turning read. However, I felt this slowed as we moved into the second half. The style became decidedly more journalistic and I found myself really skimming the last pages. That said, the mix of subject matter and clean and competent writing make for a book worth the time.
• 
  marcia

  just about finished with this book. I keep thinking of the laws that were passed and how many parts of american history are left unknown to most americans. As an avid history reader , my eyes were opened to so much I did not know about the emigration of Chinese to America and the obstacles they overcame and may be still overcoming. A comprehensive history written so elegantly and easily understood.
• 
  Ellis

  I really liked this book. I was glad to learn more about the large contribution that the Chinese and Chinese Americans have made to the United States. Unfortunately though, just when you think you've become aware of the majority of bigotry, prejudice, and opression in the US, you read a book like this and find out how naive your assumption was.
• 
  John Jung

  A very readable, accurate, and comprehensive book that I would recommend to anyone wanting a succinct (not brief) history of Chinese in America from about the 1850s to 1990.
• 
  Yang Huang

  Loved the compilation of history, personal stories, and commentaries. It helps me put the current affairs in a historical perspective. A must read!
• 
  Sarah

  This book gives a very comprehensive history of Chinese American history. The book also provides historical insights into what was happening in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan that contributed to the Chinese coming to America or affected their experiences within America. This background information is essential in providing context that tells a complete story. Chang's understanding of contextualization's importance makes the history book stand out. Though this book was long, it was necessary. The narrative framing of the story and many anecdotes made it easy to read. My only complaint is there seems to be an emphasis on the more disturbing or graphic details. I am in no way suggesting that the author should gloss over the darker parts of this history, but she does seem to like to linger on the more upsetting details.
• 
  Jeremy Kitchen

  Wished I had read this before. A great comprehensive look at the history of Chinese in America. So much that doesn't get taught (that I didn't teach). I appreciated both the larger picture that Iris Chang gives as well as the individual narrative stories that bring them to life. A thoroughly researched book. Definitely took time to work through but glad I read it.
• 
  Agatha

  A very extensive narrative of the history of Chinese immigration in America, beginning around the mid-1800s (helping to build the transcontinental railroad) up to present time. Even though it’s nonfiction, it’s very, very readable. I personally found it fascinating. It was particularly interesting to read U.S. history thru a different lens, as if listening to a well-told story this time from a new story teller. Fascinating – and really instructive. A lot of Americans who feel threatened by Chinese immigration – or who view them as “johnny-come-latelies” in the U.S.-- should read this book. But I suppose it would not hold as much personal interest for the general American reader. :( Oh well. I suppose I can understand that. :(
  
  Anyway, the author herself is a fascinating study; she has also written The Rape of Nanking which is also very highly esteemed. Unfortunately, she committed suicide while researching her next book, based upon the Bataan Death March. It seems she overworked herself and fell into depression and paranoia. :( Truly a really sad and tragic loss. :( I want to look for her RoN book and also a biography about her. (Matthew had heard of her before I had; when he saw this book, he said, “Isn’t she the one who committed suicide?” I didn’t know that sad aspect of her story but looked it up and then learned the rest of her history. :()