""We keep falling out of the story, even though we've been here for 200 years." With his history of the Chinese in America from the Gold Rush to the 1960s, Luo is trying to write Chinese Americans back into the story-and to create, he jokes, the sort of history book you could give your dad for Father's Day rather than yet another World War II tome."
"The book covers the persistence and resistance of immigrants and citizens who faced racist legal and physical attacks, such as the Los Angeles Chinese Massacre of 1871, and a mob that burned down Chinatown in Rock Springs, Wyoming. On Sat/20, Luo will be a virtual panelist for an Eastwind Books talk with writer Fae Myenne Ng and Norman Wong, a great-grandson of Wong Kim Ark, who fought a Supreme Court case to establish birthright citizenship."
"I think it's a certain relentlessness to get all the information. I mean, that's the Robert Caro line, "turn every page." He was an investigative reporter for Newsday, and documents were part of what he did as an investigative reporter. In my case, I've done a lot of reporting with data. I was kind of an early adopter of computer-assisted reporting,"
Chinese presence in America from the Gold Rush through the 1960s is documented, emphasizing episodes of racist violence, legal exclusion, and civic resistance. Incidents such as the 1871 Los Angeles Chinese Massacre and the burning of Rock Springs Chinatown are highlighted alongside legal battles that defended rights, including the Wong Kim Ark birthright citizenship case. Documentary and data-driven investigative methods are used to recover overlooked personal stories and patterns. The narrative foregrounds immigrant persistence, community resistance, and the prolonged struggle for recognition and legal protection within American civic life.
Read at 48 hills
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]