Strangers in the land : exclusion, belonging, and the epic story of the Chinese in America / Michael Luo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Luo, Michael, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--Emigration and immigration--History.

United States.

United States--Ethnic relations.

United States. Chinese Exclusion Act.

Chinese Americans--History.

Chinese Americans.

Chinese--United States--History.

Chinese.

Genre:

Informational works.

Physical Description:

x, 542 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First Doubleday hardcover edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Doubleday, 2025.

Summary:

"From New Yorker editor and writer Michael Luo, a vivid, urgent history of two centuries of Chinese exclusion and the birth of anti-Asian feeling in America. In 1889, when the Supreme Court upheld the Chinese Exclusion Act-a measure barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States that remained in effect for more than fifty years-Justice Stephen Johnson Field characterized the Chinese as a people "residing apart by themselves." They were, Field concluded, "strangers in the land." Today, there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States, yet this label still hovers over Asian Americans. In Strangers in the Land, Luo traces anti-Asian feeling in America to the first wave of immigrants from China in the mid-nineteenth-century: laborers who traveled to California in search of gold and railroad work. Their communities almost immediately faced mobs of white vigilantes who drove them from their workplaces and homes. In his rich, character-driven history, Luo tells stories like that of Denis Kearney, the sandlot demagogue who became the face of the anti-Chinese movement, and of activists who fought back, like Massachusetts Senator George Frisbie Hoar and newspaperman Wong Chin Foo. After the halt on immigration in 1889, the Chinese-American community who remained struggled to survive and thrive on the margins of American life. In 1965, when LBJ's Immigration and Nationality Act forbade discrimination by national origin, America opened its doors wide to families like those of Luo's parents, but he finds that the centuries of exclusion of Chinese-Americans left a legacy: many Asians are still treated, and feel, like outsiders today. Strangers in the Land is a sweeping narrative of a forgotten chapter in American history, and a reminder that America's present reflects its exclusionary past"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Gold Mountain

Indian, Negro, or Chinaman

The Great Army and the Iron Road

Colorblind

Rope! More rope!

The cauldron

Lewd and immoral purposes

Order of Caucasians

The Chinese must go!

The mission

The Chinese question

Beyond debate

The gatekeepers

Transformations

Wipe out the plague spots

White men, fall in

Driven out

Contagion

No return

The resistance

Native sons

Ruin and rebirth

The station

Becoming Chinese American

Confession.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Keyes Fund bookplate.

ISBN:

9780385548571

0385548575

OCLC:

1483045991