The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe

The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream Reviews

• 
  Dmitri

  There is a famous story about Deng Xiaoping’s visit to Washington in January 1979 when Jimmy Carter scolded him about China’s restrictions on the freedom of departure and suggested more people should be allowed to leave China. Deng fixed Carter with his beady gaze and said: “Certainly, President Carter. How many millions would you like?” - Patrick Radden Keefe
  
  “Early on he went to see her at her at the Knickerbocker Village apartment. He made it clear to her, through the interpreter, that they were on to her and would get her eventually. To his surprise Sister Ping wasn’t fazed in the slightest. ‘You don’t have the time or the resources to get me.’ But what always struck him about the exchange wasn’t just the arrogance of it, or the insult, so much as the fact that she was right.” - Sister Ping to an Immigration and Naturalization Service agent, 1984
  
  “For the Fujianese who could now afford refrigerators and televisions, purchase cars, throw wedding banquets and build new homes, no amount of propaganda or persuasion could diminish the widely held conviction the snakehead trade was a fundamental social good. It enabled hundreds of thousands of people to pull themselves out of poverty to material comforts that would have been unimaginable a generation before them.” - Patrick Radden Keefe
  
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  Patrick Radden Keefe, a long time journalist with the NY Times and New Yorker, begins this account of New York’s Chinatown with the 1993 beached ‘Golden Venture’ ship in Queens carrying three hundred undocumented immigrants, ten who died in the landing. Beginning in the 1980’s waves of Fujianese came to NYC, supplanting an earlier Cantonese population here since the late 19th century. The book is only partially a study of the ship incident, and more of the human smuggling gangs operating between China and Chinatown, in particular one leader Sister Ping, and a general history of Chinese immigration to the US.
  
  The 1848 discovery of gold in California and abundance of land attracted Cantonese laborers and fortune seekers. Free passage was provided in exchange for indentured work. The construction of the trans-continental railroad brought many thousands of Chinese workers, until the west was flooded with US migrants after the Civil War. In direct competition for employment the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 ended immigration and the Chinese retreated to restaurant and laundry businesses. FDR repealed the Act in 1943 as a concession to Chinese allies in WWII but Mao’s victory in 1949 curtailed further immigration.
  
  Peasants were tied to their provinces after the war. Ping was born in rural Fujian months after the PRC was created. 1958’s Great Leap Forward turned farms into communes, starving 38 million farmers. 1966’s Cultural Revolution closed schools and encouraged students to turn on elders, further eroding Ping’s trust in China’s future. The Fujianese had a long history of seafaring, trading and smuggling, and were spread over SE Asia and Pacific islands. In 1973 she was married, moving to Hong Kong, and in 1981 followed in the footsteps of her father and husband, who had lived in New York but been deported.
  
  By working long hours at menial off-the-books jobs, living in cramped grimy apartments and sleeping in shifts, the Fujianese were able to pay off their snakehead debts of $18,000 in a few years, the price of illegal passage to the US. They came in the tens of thousands. Ping arrived by airplane with a work visa; she had a successful business in Hong Kong, and rented an apartment in a nearby NYC housing project. She opened a store and began to smuggle Fujianese through Hong Kong, Central America, Mexico to LA inside hidden compartments in vans by the hundreds, with help of her sisters and brothers.
  
  In NY Ping would collect money from relatives of her clients before their release, whom they would need to repay. She undercut Western Union and Bank of China remittance fees, bought a building and opened a restaurant. A 1986 act gave amnesty to undocumented immigrants, encouraging a flood of new ones. Her price for entry doubled to $36,000. Ping was backed by the Chinatown tongs, a combination of credit union, employment agency and an arbitrator of disputes, regulating brothels, gambling and drug trade. By the late 80’s they had begun to subcontract out enforcement duties to street gangs.
  
  The INS and FBI were aware of Ping’s operation soon after it started but short of resources nothing was done. With a large influx of immigrants gangs proliferated, extorting money from businesses, territorial wars waged block-by-block. The new gangs didn’t observe traditional tong power structures and burglarized local homes for hoards of cash, including Ping’s. A leader of the Fuk Ching gang, known as Ah Kay, kidnapped new arrivals and forced families to pay ransom. But the real money was in smuggling people. By the early 90’s Ping began to use the Niagara River as the point of entry into New York.
  
  A tragic accident alerted the Canadian authorities who were soon in touch with American investigators. When Ping was caught in a sting many of her family members were arrested with her. They received only a few months in jail for this single incident although courts were aware of the larger operation. The 1989 massacre at Tiananmen had spurred GHW Bush to offer more visas to students and political refugees, a boon for the snakehead trade. It also included provisions to respond to China’s one child policy, coerced abortions or sterilization, so that any fertile Chinese person was a candidate for asylum.
  
  Following the Bush laws remote border crossings were no longer needed. Migrants showed up at JFK after flushing passports down the airplane toilet, claimed political asylum and picked up in the arrivals lobby. They flooded the INS in hundreds of thousands. Impossible to deport, since their country of origin refused to repatriate the undocumented, they disappeared into the underground economy. In contrast to the INS the snakeheads were well funded sophisticated organizations, by some estimates bringing in $3-7 billion in fees. Ah Kay, who was deported after prison time, returned as a political refugee.
  
  An increasing influx of clients led snakeheads to use cargo ships to smuggle people directly, avoiding expensive airfare and travel documents. Ah Kay helped offload passengers on smaller fishing boats to avoid detection by the Coast Guard. Ping formed a partnership with him but gave information to the FBI to get revenge for his previous kidnapping of her children. As business continued to boom Ah Kay financed a large boat along with Ping and others. Clients were stuck in Bangkok and Mombasa with no way to leave. Together the partners purchased a derelict fishing boat and renamed it as the ‘Golden Venture’.
  
  Keefe spends a fair amount of time describing the transport conditions of the immigrants who risked their lives trying to reach the US. Some hiked through the malaria infested jungle of Burma to Thailand, others spent months in the filthy holds of ships with little water or food. Through remote countries like Kenya and Guatemala many died on the way, testaments to their will to survive. Ultimately Ping and Ah Kay went to prison, he with a reduced sentence and witness protection for cooperating on gang cases. Ping was sentenced to 35 years, and served 10 before her death. She is revered in Chinatown along with Bush.
  
  The passengers on the ‘Golden Venture’ were detained in prisons across the country, part of the immigration policy of the new Clinton administration. One in ten were granted asylum, half deported and the rest imprisoned for four years awaiting appeals. Clinton paroled them in 1997. Instead of moving to Chinatown they spread out over the country many opening restaurants. Economic gains in China lessened the volume of migrants. During the time period covered here an estimated 500,000 had gained entry through the snakehead business, although it is hard to determine because of the clandestine nature of the trade.
  
  This book could have been mostly contained in an extended magazine article; one appeared in the New Yorker by Keefe. In over 300 pages Keefe reports on all of his research in the Chinatown underworld. As a sociological study it has limited insight into the majority of the law abiding Chinese who may or may not have landed here illegally. Chinatown has long been and remains a peaceful and culturally stimulating place in lower Manhattan. In the 90’s gang wars were inscrutable to outsiders; things were worse in the Bronx or Brooklyn. Short of this perspective it’s a well written look inside the seamier side of the neighborhood.
• 
  Max

  In 1960 there were 236,000 Chinese in America. By1990 that number had swelled to 1.6 million. A large portion of that growth was Fujianese, and for the vast majority of Fujianese emigrants, the first stop was New York City. Chinatown residents began referring to East Broadway as Fuzhou Street. They knew that most of the Fujianese rivals were illegal and still paying off their passage. They called them ‘eighteen-thousand-dollar men’ after the going snakehead rate in the eighties.

  
  
  Keefe describes the extensive human smuggling operations from Fujian province, Fujianese gangs that sprang up and exploited businesses and emigrants in Chinatown, the innocuous looking Sister Ping “the mother of all snakeheads”, and the decade long efforts of U.S. law enforcement to get to the bottom of it all. Snakehead is what Fujianese called the head of a human smuggling enterprise. Smuggling is different from trafficking which deceives people and forces them into servitude. Upon arrival the smuggled Fujianese were free to go and do what they wanted as long as they paid the balance of their fee. The few that didn’t were held for ransom until their relatives who had already committed, paid up. The way the system worked was dependent on a tight family Chinese culture. Getting to America was seen as not only a life altering opportunity for the individual, but for the entire family and progeny. NYC’s Chinatown was the destination because a Fujianese could immediately get a job in a restaurant, laundry or shop. He or she didn’t need to speak English or Mandarin or Cantonese which most didn’t. Speaking the Fujianese dialect was enough. Working in even these menial jobs, they made more in a month than they could in a year back in Fujian. They were soon sending remittances back home to pay off their debts and helping to bring another family member over.
  
  Sister Ping moved to Chinatown in 1981. She opened a small store and slept in a room above it. Leading a seemingly simple life, she looked like an average resident. But she was a mastermind. She used a wide variety of schemes to smuggle people in. She began simply, giving people fake passports and booking them on flights to the U.S. where they would ask for asylum, be released and then disappear into Chinatown. But as her reputation and business grew, she needed to cost effectively scale up her methods. She flew large groups into Honduras or Guatemala and then snuck them across the border to the U. S. She began using more and more agents and helpers, many from the gangs. This would lead to her eventual downfall. She along with other snakeheads would buy or lease entire ships that would be crammed full of emigrants. The Golden Venture incident became national news precipitating the political pressure that focused law enforcement to finally uncover how Sister Ping and her cohorts worked.
  
  In 1993 the Golden Venture was purposely run aground near the beach at Rockaway, NY. Law enforcement was caught totally by surprise. The gang that was to meet the ship and bring the 272 men, women and children ashore had been arrested for unrelated matters. The on-board smuggler in charge was desperate to unload the passengers. They had spent four months on the ship coming from Bangkok via Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. They survived on rice and peanuts in the ship’s hold where they lived and slept each on a 2X6 foot piece of plywood, one crammed next to the others. Many had spent months prior to that on another miserable ship that became inoperable and was abandoned by two captains. At Rockaway the passengers had to swim ashore and ten drowned. The survivors were taken to jail while they filed for asylum. Many spent years in jail. Others agreed to be deported. Those returning to China would be punished. Only two on board the Golden Venture were Sister Ping’s clients. Most of her clients had refused to get on the ship. But the subsequent investigation into the Golden Venture would piece by piece uncover enough information to enable law enforcement years later to apprehend Sister Ping. She had amassed tens of millions of dollars smuggling many thousands of Fujianese into the U.S. She had also profited from an extensive underground banking operation.
  
  Keefe gives us a well-researched true crime drama that is relevant to the current dilemma around illegal immigration in the U.S. He exposes a significant chapter in human smuggling to the United States that I had not known about. Keefe details the myriad ways the snakeheads used to get people into the U.S. and the international corruption that made it possible. He reports extensively on the years of investigation, how detectives worked informants, made arrests, got cooperation from those facing prison time, and finally cornered Sister Ping. He also reports on the gang wars that rocked Chinatown in the eighties and nineties. The book is a straight forward, informative and worthwhile read. It illustrates what a difficult problem human smuggling is in a world where an ever-increasing number of people are being marginalized and desperate to find a way to a better life.
  
• 
  David

  All of the elements of a thriller are here (murder, corruption, double-crosses, huge sums of cash, intimidation, among others) but it really doesn’t read that way. Instead it’s more of a sweeping view of the snakehead trade between Fujian Province, China and Chinatown in Manhattan. In particular we learn about a small handful of major players in the late 80s and early 90s.
  
  The author writes extremely well and, quite similar to Sebastian Junger, has an informatively digressive style. He never gets too far into the details, always giving enough information on the side before returning to the main story. The people we meet along the way don’t come with excessive baggage or angel’s wings, we’re left to make our own judgments.
  
  I’m very surprised I hadn’t heard anything about this book before reading it. If I hadn’t stumbled on it in my library’s online inventory I would have never known it existed. It deserves a wide audience and would make a great miniseries.
• 
  Dan

  The Snake Head by Patrick Radden Keefe
  
  This history of the Chinese smuggling trade into the United States was penned in 2009. While not as popular as his 2019 blockbuster, Say Nothing, about the violence in Northern Ireland, Snake Head is a fascinating read.
  
  This history follows Cheng Chui Ping, a Chinese immigrant to NYC, as she bankrolled and worked with the Fuk Ching gang to smuggle thousands of Fujianese into NYC during the 1980’s and 1990’s. Her nickname is Sister Ping and she is revered in Chinatown and has become quite wealthy.
  
  The story begins in 1993 with a shipwreck off the coast of Long Island where several Chinese immigrants die and one of the survivors who swims the currents to the safety of the beach mentions to Police that Sister Ping was the head of the smuggling operation known as the Snake Head. The name comes from the resemblance between an illegal immigrant wiggling through fence wires to a snake. This shipwreck incident draws the attention of the Immigration and Nationalization Service (INS) and they begin an investigation. Over several years the government and prosecutors put together a picture of the extent of the smuggling operation that had been in place since the early 1980’s. They get a ruthless but key gang-leader to name names to avoid prison. Authorities were amazed with the lack of accountability for the crimes on the part of the ringleaders. The ringleaders underestimated the outrage of prosecutors and the judicial system.
  
  There is a good deal of history going back to Chinese immigration of the 19th century. In the 1960’s there were fewer than 20,000 Chinese immigrants in NYC but by 1990 there were more than a quarter million. Many had crossed the border with Mexico, Canada but 50% of immigrants had come through JFK and Sister Ping told them what to say to immigration agents, knowing if the clients said they lost their passport then there was no space to detain them. There were several examples in the book of smuggling operations that became tragic including one incident along a common Chinese smuggling route near Niagara Falls in upstate New York. It ended with bodies at the bottom of Niagara Falls.
  
  4 stars. Very solid story in a narrative format. And an interesting bit of American history.
• 
  F.E. Beyer

  Edit Feb 2023: Picador has just republished this with a tastefully minimalist cover. It's an allegedly updated version of the original published in 2009. Saw it at the airport bookshop before taking a domestic flight this morning. When I was looking for it a year ago, I found it surprising, given PRF's recent success, that one of his major works was out of print and unavailable as an ebook (unless you looked really hard;)). Another surprise: it's under 400 pages.
  
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  Modus Operandi PRK: pick an interesting subject, research the f out of it, and write a looong book. He saves his opinions and judgements until the end. A wise choice, you don't have to agree with his politics to enjoy his work.
  
  'The Snakehead' is about illegal migration to the USA in the 1980s and 90s from the Chinese province of Fujian. New kids on the block in New York's Cantonese-dominated Chinatown, the Fujianese started to form their own gangs. The most famous was the Fuk Ching, whose leader Ah Kay robbed and then worked with a big-time people smuggler, or snakehead, known as Sister Ping. I'd learnt about these characters from researching my own book but PRK filled in a lot of gaps.
  
  'The Snakehead' is centred around the disastrous running aground of the Golden Venture, a ship loaded with illegal Chinese immigrants, in Queens, New York. Ten people drowned. Sister Ping and other snakeheads had contracted Ah Kay to unload the passengers onto fishing boats. However, because of a turf war among members of the Fuk Ching, he didn't come through for them.
  
  The second half of the book deals with the legal cases of Golden Venture passengers fighting to stay in the USA, and eventually the trial of Sister Ping. PRK is an exhaustive writer and can go into too much detail, but I didn't get as bogged down here as I did in his new book about the opioid epidemic, 'Empire of Pain.'
• 
  Nigeyb

  
  Patrick Radden Keefe wrote two of my favourite non-fiction books of recent years (
  Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2018) and
  Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (2021)) so I was keen to read more by him.
  The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream, originally published in 2009, is getting republished, presumably on the back of the acclaim for his more recent work.
  
  People smuggling is a grim business. Migrants and asylum seekers are invariably desperate and willing to risk everything for the possibility of a better life, something that often gets lost in debates about immigration, certainly here in the UK.
  
  This book explores the history of Chinese immigration to America and how in the 1980s and early 1990s lucrative smuggling rings, known as the snakehead trade, brought thousands of illegal immigrants into the USA. Many of these came from China's Fujian province. The smuggler makes c$18000 per person which the new arrival has to clear as soon as possible usually through years of hard menial work. The remarkable Sister Ping (aka Cheng Chui Ping) is one such smuggler who ran her business out of a nondescript shop. She was revered within her own community for her role in getting people into the US and for transferring funds back home, amongst other illegal activities.
  
  The Snakehead is further proof that Patrick Radden Keefe is an excellent investigative journalist and a consummate storyteller. He keeps this engrossing tale moving along at a good pace and ably illuminates the world of Chinese gangs, US immigration policy, people smuggling, law enforcement and the judicial process.
  
  Another fascinating read from Patrick Radden Keefe.
  
  4/5
  
  
  
  A mesmerizing narrative about the rise and fall of an unlikely international crime boss
  
  In the 1980s, a wave of Chinese from Fujian province began arriving in America. Like other immigrant groups before them, they showed up with little money but with an intense work ethic and an unshakeable belief in the promise of the United States. Many of them lived in a world outside the law, working in a shadow economy overseen by the ruthless gangs that ruled the narrow streets of New York’s Chinatown.
  
  The figure who came to dominate this Chinese underworld was a middle-aged grandmother known as Sister Ping. Her path to the American dream began with an unusual business run out of a tiny noodle store on Hester Street. From her perch above the shop, Sister Ping ran a full-service underground bank for illegal Chinese immigrants. But her real business-a business that earned an estimated $40 million-was smuggling people.
  
  As a “snakehead,” she built a complex—and often vicious—global conglomerate, relying heavily on familial ties, and employing one of Chinatown's most violent gangs to protect her power and profits. Like an underworld CEO, Sister Ping created an intricate smuggling network that stretched from Fujian Province to Hong Kong to Burma to Thailand to Kenya to Guatemala to Mexico. Her ingenuity and drive were awe-inspiring both to the Chinatown community—where she was revered as a homegrown Don Corleone—and to the law enforcement officials who could never quite catch her.
  
  Indeed, Sister Ping’s empire only came to light in 1993 when the Golden Venture, a ship loaded with 300 undocumented immigrants, ran aground off a Queens beach. It took New York’s fabled “Jade Squad” and the FBI nearly ten years to untangle the criminal network and home in on its unusual mastermind.
  
  THE SNAKEHEAD is a panoramic tale of international intrigue and a dramatic portrait of the underground economy in which America’s twelve million illegal immigrants live. Based on hundreds of interviews, Patrick Radden Keefe’s sweeping narrative tells the story not only of Sister Ping, but of the gangland gunslingers who worked for her, the immigration and law enforcement officials who pursued her, and the generation of penniless immigrants who risked death and braved a 17,000 mile odyssey so that they could realize their own version of the American dream. The Snakehead offers an intimate tour of life on the mean streets of Chinatown, a vivid blueprint of organized crime in an age of globalization and a masterful exploration of the ways in which illegal immigration affects us all.
  
  
• 
  Nancy Oakes

  According to the author, a "snakehead" is someone who charges a huge amount of money to "take people out of China and into other countries." This book focuses on one of these people, Sister Ping, who came to the US legally and then proceeded to cash in on every opportunity she could, including smuggling human beings into the country for millions in profit. It was the wreck of the ship Golden Venture near Rockaway NY in 1993 in which several people died that captured the attention of the Federal Government and set several officials on the trail of Sister Ping. But that's not the whole story here...it's also a look at the shifting policies of the Feds on legal and illegal immigration throughout our country's history as well as an examination of why law enforcement often has trouble getting a handle on this very big problem. Misinformation, lack of funding, a staggering amount of asylum requests (and the question of who will receive asylum and who will be deported), and often corruption on the part of some INS (now ICE) agents are all factors that the author examines in trying to understand why this woman was able to elude capture for nearly a decade; not to mention the closing of ranks within the Chinese communities in the US around someone they considered almost a saint.
  
  The story of the Golden Venture is the focal point for examining wider and pertinent issues, and while the author examines the impact of human smuggling and illegal immigrants in this country, he also makes very clear that many people trying to get their chance at the American dream are willing to take the risks involved with illegal smuggling operations. Also, he makes the point when the Feds actually manage to capture someone like Sister Ping, there are other people waiting in the wings.
  
  Overall, this was a good read. It seemed to go on a bit, and probably could have been somewhat condensed, but other than that, I liked it. People on both sides of the issue of illegal immigration will want to read this book.
• 
  Susan

  I have really enjoyed previous books by Patrick Radden Keefe, including, ‘Say Nothing,’ and ‘Empire of Pain.’ I was pleased to receive a copy of this republished work through NetGalley and, I am delighted to say, that I was fascinated by this. Keefe writes non-fiction but he is an excellent storyteller, and, in this book, he has a fascinating story to tell.
  
  This is a tale of immigration, people smuggling, corruption, organised crime, personal suffering and personal gain. At its heart is the snakehead trade in humans between Fujian Province in China and Chinatown in New York. Central is Sister Ping, the nickname of Cheng Chui Ping, who immigrated to America legally, but then proceeded to smuggle those from her homeland to the States. She hid behind cultural beliefs in supporting those from China, saying that family was central to the Chinese and that it was expected that immigrants would bring family over. In reality, of course, this was about money and power. Respected in her community, she set up her office opposite the Bank of China, undercutting them to workers wishing to send money home and becoming so confident that she informed government officials who became aware of her, that they would be unable to stop her.
  
  As with other books, Keefe branches out to explore the difficult questions around immigration, people smuggling and how people find the risk worthwhile to embark on often deadly dangerous journeys to try to find a new life. This is despite having to pay back huge amounts to people smugglers, as well as the high possibility of losing their life. It also looks at those, like Sister Ping, who become central to these illegal routes into the country and how, even if they are stopped, the problem continues. Organised crime is precisely that and it is debatable how much control governments have over the constant desire of people to better their lives. A fascinating tale and well told.
  
  
  
  
• 
  Jill Hutchinson

  This is the fascinating true story of the "snakeheads", those NYC Chinatown based purveyors of human traffic from China. I had not realized the number of people who were fleeing from China in the 1990s and the extent of the network of human smugglers who were making millions of dollars from this business. The major player in this nefarious business was the infamous Sister Ping, an unassuming Chinese woman who owned a restaurant in Chinatown. She reached legendary status with those that she brought to the United States, although she charged them exorbitant prices for her services
  The story begins with the scuttling of the Golden Venture, a rusted hulk that transported human cargo across the Atlantic and ended up off the beach at Rockaway, NY. Many of the passengers drowned and the rest were incarcerated for several years.....this tragedy instigated the search for Sister Ping and her compatriots.
  This is a well researched book and will raise the question as to whether the "snakeheads" were actually providing a service to their clients, or just gangsters out for a quick buck. It's an interesting tale and recommended.
• 
  Leftbanker

  There was a lot of great information in this book. It is a great work of journalism, but it just read like a few dozen long magazine articles stapled together with no real cohesion. There isn’t much in it that propels you forward. I found the same true in Patrick Radden Keefe’s book about the Troubles in Ireland.
  
  I have been trying hard to research the Chinese community where I live in Spain, but it’s almost impossible to find the thinnest shred of information. There is NEVER anything in the press about the 10,000 or 20,000 or who knows how many Chinese people live in Valencia. In all of my years here, I could count on the fingers of one hand the journalism pieces I have read about Chinese “immigrants” here. I put that word in quotations because I don’t believe that they are immigrants in the true sense, but more like economic colonists doing the bidding for the Chinese mainland government halfway across the globe.
  
  
  
• 
  Brenna

  I would have been much more into this had it been a longform article and not an entire book. Well-researched and competently written, but I was pretty bored throughout and skimmed a lot.
• 
  Jay French

  Snakehead is a term for people who bring foreigners into a country illegally, outside of immigration laws. Mostly through the book the storyline follows a particularly successful snakehead, Sister Ping. The book details Sister Ping and other snakeheads smuggling Chinese citizens to the US, as well as their plentiful helpers from many different countries. For human smuggling, you could say it takes a village. Law enforcement in the US is also examined here, with profiles of a few of the people that took charge of investigations and prosecutions. Also included are many different examples of people entering the country with the help of snakeheads. The personal stories of so many involved was well done. I most appreciated the descriptions of how the snakeheads figured out how the immigration control system was changing, and changed their tactics to keep a step ahead of the law. For instance, for a few years a sure way to enter the US was to fly on a fake passport, aided by bribed airport personnel in a foreign country, then flush the passport in the arrival airport, which was usually JFK. When that procedure was shut down, the snakeheads just looked for new ways, and always found them. Sister Ping and the others were quite enterprising. And when caught by law enforcement, they were generally lightly punished. Overall, an interesting take on “true crime”, and a sorry perspective on the holes in the US immigration law enforcement. This compares well to many “pop business” business strategy books I’ve read, focusing on pivoting your operations when your market or environment changes, and the book may appeal to fans of those kinds of books.
• 
  Jen

  Patrick Radden Keefe has quickly become one of my favorite non-fiction writers. I came to this book after reading his latest, “Say Anything” and I am gobsmacked that not only is/are the story/stories in “Snakehead” true but happened where I live— albeit before my time here.
  
  I highly recommend this book and his other work— including his New Yorker writings. Radden Keefe painstakingly investigates and researches his books for years and it makes the wait to read his work worth it. He is an incredible writer and investigates material that is utterly fascinating.
  
  I can’t wait to read his next book.
  
  A++
• 
  Kay

  This is the third book I've read by Patrick Raddon Keefe, so I was expecting a solid, well-researched and absorbing tale, and that's precisely what I got. At the core of the books I've read is crime -- motivated by politics (Say Nothing), greed (Empire of Pain), and opportunism/greed (The Snakehead). All three books were fascinating, and it's especially impressive how Keefes follow the legal angles, and, in this case, the politics of immigration.
  
  Having said that, it's best to read these books at a reasonable clip so that you don't lose track of who's who. This isn't light reading, but it's rewarding for those who prefer nonfiction and don't expect anything remotely resembling a happy ending. As with his other books, I came away having learned a lot, and with my cynicism fortified.
• 
  Johnny

  A huge book that spans a massive network: it helped me comprehend what we talk about when we talk about migration not as much in the human sense, but in the gears that grind it along and churn billions of dollars out of it along the way. He is so intimate with the subject matter (and without knowing any Chinese...?) that it makes sense of it all and is still a page turner. A reminder also of how different the dialogue around immigration was even 10 years ago when this book was published—in a lot of ways, the post-9/11 immigration world in the US shares more in common with the pre 9/11 immigration world than with now. The alliance of The Golden Vision advocacy group just wouldn’t happen now.
  
  And so ends my summer of non-fiction.
• 
  Philip

  The Snakehead is not as concise or as enthrallingly brilliant as Patrick Radden Keefe’s recent Say Nothing, but it is still a completely fascinating examination of criminal ingenuity, greed, the conflict between immigration and isolationism, and the quest for the American Dream.
  
  In particular, the first half of the book that details how a little old Asian lady in NYC’s Chinatown set up an expansive, complex international criminal enterprise was brilliant. This book is the kind of property that should be optioned as a miniseries, just like HBO’s Chernobyl.
• 
  Shariq Chishti

  Patrick Radden Keefe is fast becoming one of my favorite writers stumbing upon Say Something and now this. It is indeed an epic tale of American Dream and the desire to achieve it with whatever way possible. And when the desire for something is so intense crime is bound to rear its ugly head. Its a story of how common people who once came to the US in search of livelihood for their families became heads of global and sophisticated human smuggling syndicate. The book reads like a crime thriller and is hard to put down.
  
• 
  Kate P

  Okay not as perfect as Say Nothing or Empire but PRK is still my boyfriend and got me out of my June 3-star slump! Fascinating story and super compelling storytelling, though I wonder how it would have been different had it been written today.
• 
  Rolin

  the sopranos but fujianese
  
  just an extraordinary piece of journalism breaking down immigrant organized crime, the violence of borders, and the lengths some go to try to make it in America
• 
  Noreen

  Starts as a true crime story: June 6, 1993 On Rockaway beach New York about 250 Chinese wash ashore. A few strong swimmers have dry clothes in a plastic bag taped to their legs get dressed and walk away. Eventually 10 bodies are counted. Half the reminder are moved to a prison in York, Pennsylvania. The immigrants moved have asylum cases and need legal representation. Page 227:Craig Trebilcock, a young litigator was asked to do a favor and represent some of the Chinese. Craig was previously an army lawyer in Germany just before the wall came down. After the wall came down, he noticed the West Germans were gregarious, relaxed and generally optimistic. The East Germans seemed to just shuffle along, eyes in their shoe tips, always a little fearful of what the future held in store. Not a political person, the faces of the East Germans had — that look —- instilled in him an abiding conviction about the oppressive toll that a Communist system could have on the human spirit. And four years later, as he sat facing Pin Lin in the York County Prison, he recognized that look again.
  
  Page 310 In China, a human life isn’t worth ten pennies. Ten thousand people come and 100 die? Bad luck. If they make it, their families get rich. Their villages get rich.
  
  Page 188: With 1/5 of the worlds population, some 900 million of whom are peasants, China has a way of dousing any humanitarian assumptions with a colder demographic reality. There is a famous story about Deng Xiaopings visit in Jan 1979, when Jimmy Carter scolded him about China’s restrictions on the “freedom of departure” —- the right to emigration—and suggested that more people should be permitted to leave China. Deng fixed Carter and said, “Why, certainly, President Carter. How many million would you like?
  
  Interesting explanations on international banking without banks, taking advantage the loopholes in international shipping........
  
  And it’s all true.
• 
  Trish

  Truly fascinating. Keefe did an awesome amount of research, and organized the overlapping stories on different continents so that the pacing was right. Epic in scope and mouth-dropping in detail, these interlocked stories touch so many lives and so many parts of the world, it must have been difficult to know where to begin. The characterizations are rich, however, and Keefe gives us a human-scaled drama. What struck me at the end was how persons of every ethnicity, political stripe, and religious persuasion could find justification in these stories for holding a particular view about immmigration. Let it also be said that people who usually react one way on immigration turned 180 degrees when it came to a boatload of Fujian refugees dumped on Rockaway beach. Political arch enemies joined hands to save these folks, most of whom undoubtedly had absolutely no clue why anyone was trying to help them. Law-sy, I'd like to see a film made of this.
• 
  Rachael Faith

  Meticulously sourced, fascinating story
  
  The American dream, the Chinatown underbelly, and the mastermind behind one of the largest human smuggling rings.
  
  This book was long in the middle and at times not quite as engaging as the beginning. But I kept coming back to it day after day and it was fully worth it.
• 
  Kara Ayers

  I was drawn to this book with an interest in learning anything I can about China, which is my son's country of birth and I'd also just finished Patrick Radden Keefe's Empire of Pain (which is amazing!-highly recommend).
  This rating for me is probably more accurately a 3.5-somewhere between good-glad I read it and really good-will stick with me for a very long time.
  The book details one well-known smuggler, Sister Ping, and her network of people who moved people from China to the US. There's corruption, murder, deception, and exploitation. A major point that stood out to me was the corruption on the US immigration side-no single US government entity has more investigated cases of corruption. In what we most definitely should see as an urgent need to reform our immigration policy, this reality must be a part of that process.
  The book dropped below a 4 for me at times because it became very lengthy. I probably shouldn't have followed Empire of Pain, also an in-depth analysis, so quickly with this one. At points, I lost track of the timeline, which was extensive. I was also surprised that this was written quite a while ago in terms of global context so I often wondered where are we are now.
  I appreciated a new (to me) and needed perspective of the history of anti-Asian sentiment. I feel a deeply-held conviction and obligation to learn all that I can to protect my son from the hate that I unfortunately know exists. I also learned through these stories of the devotion to family and the incredible resilience of the Chinese people. I wish that we were not so separated by what can feel like ambiguous boundaries. What I enjoy most about Patrick Redden Keefe (and many thanks to Jordy's Book Club for introducing me) is his ability to teach without judgment or the subtle xenophobic sentiment that is woven into so many media portrayals of human trafficking and illegal immigration. Patrick tells the story and allows us to reach conclusions.
• 
  Larry

  At a time when illegal immigration again tops the US news, this book is a timely, detailed, and fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the world of human trafficking, specifically the smuggling of illegal immigrants from China into the USA. In exquisite detail the author traces the smuggling route from the south China coast to its rugged southwest, into the jungles of Burma and Thailand, then to Kenya and finally the US east coast and Manhattan Chinatown, from the viewpoints of those fleeing China, those managing the operation, and the law enforcement officers who struggled to fit all the pieces together.
  
  It's an impressive feat of research, considering the types of unsavory and elusive characters the author managed to interview. Speaking of characters, most of the actors in the story are masterfully presented neither as villains nor heroes, but as deeply rendered human beings...all except for central character Sister Ping. She was apparently such a master at hiding in plain sight, that her enigmatic qualities come across that way: there isn't much personality to show.
  
  I liked this book very much. Though it covers events from twenty years ago, I'm sure that the exact same human trafficking business model is still going on today from Latin America to the North African coast.
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  Ankur Shah

  really good book. it’s primarily abt this famous snakehead (immigrant smuggler), sister ping, who sets up shop in chinatown and proceeds to build one of the world’s largest human smuggling operations in the US from the late 80s to the early 00s.
  
  the narrative structure is really engaging and clever cuz he ties all these different topics together through the story of the Golden Venture, a ship carrying a bunch of Chinese migrants that ran aground near long island and caused a huge hubbub in the US. he’s able to tie in Chinese emigration culture to the US, Fujianese establishing themselves in the chinatown, the chinatown gangs, US history and complicated attitude towards immigrants, the world of human smuggling. and the character development of some of the main protagonists is excellent.
  
  it was very fascinating and informative. felt like reading a history book that is a genuine page-turner
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  Jake

  How is Patrick Radden Keefe so damn good at writing non-fiction? This doesn't reach the heights of Say Nothing (really what can?) but it's a fascinating story in its own right and Keefe tells it well and thoroughly, providing enough detail without larding the narrative. He also takes an eagle's eye view on economic migration, the plight of Fujianese folk in both China and America, and the complexity of human migration. It was both fascinating and horrifying and I appreciate how he gave Sister Ping the most thorough of examinations to express how while America's immigration policies are rigged and racist, manipulating them at the cost of human lives doesn't make you a hero either. 
• 
  Vera

  The Snakehead is a book about the sprawling human smuggling operations between Fujian and America and ugh it was so good. It provided a balance of viewpoints on human smuggling and aliens. Was it overall morally good or bad? The book leaves it up to the reader to decide.
  
  I love the way Keefe writes. It’s non-fiction in an engrossing fiction form and he has this talent with words. He chooses his words carefully, and when he used an unusual word, it was because it had the nuance required. Since the topics he picks are often long and highly complex, I’m thankful for his amazing ability of giving just the right amount of details to get the story going.
  
  It’s my second book of Keefe’s and an older one in fact. But it didn’t disappoint at all.
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  Jim

  Quite a bit more, much of which felt a tad repetitive, about illegal Chinese migration to the United States, the dangers and deadly competition in both getting migrants here and amongst rival smuggling groups, and the often terrible risks desperate people take and the often price many pay. I much enjoy Keefe's writing and applaud his research. There is so much to learn here, that it was wearing me out a bit, but I do feel better informed. Did I enjoy it as much as some of his other works? No, but it was still pretty good.
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  Treesh

  "i thought about the hundred or so passengers from the ship who had been deported to china over the years and the fact that almost all of them had eventually come back. the resilience of these people was astonishing to me, and it occurred to me that in their sheer determination to get to this country and stay here, the passengers from the golden venture, who were born in china and still speak only broken english, are in some ways more american than i will ever be"