Strangers in the land Exclusion, belonging, and the epic story of the Chinese in America

Review by Booklist Review

Luo's history of the Chinese American immigrant experience emphasizes pockets of belonging amidst a vast landscape of racially motivated exclusion. Beginning in the 1840s, the first major wave of Chinese immigrants entered through San Francisco en route to the gold mines, where they "patiently scratched out earnings" from claims abandoned by white miners. Chinese immigrant labor built the transcontinental railroad, and Chinese entrepreneurs grew the commercial infrastructure of the American West. But, despite the increasingly diverse population and its ideals of liberty and equality in the U.S., Chinese Americans found themselves at the bottom of a racial hierarchy, the victims of both casual violence and legally sanctioned cruelty. In 1882, decades-long efforts to restrict Chinese immigration through "miner's taxes," housing restrictions, and other discriminatory tactics would culminate in the so-called Chinese Exclusion Act, the first significant U.S. legislation to target members of a specific nation of origin. Inspired in part by his own unsettling experience of modern-day anti-Asian racism, award-winning New Yorker editor and writer Luo celebrates the vitality and persistence of Chinese Americans while lamenting feelings of precariousness that pervade even today. His chronicle adds a much-needed Asian and Pacific voice to primarily Eurocentric narratives of nineteenth-century immigration.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Library Journal Review

New Yorker editor Luo debuts with a devastating narrative history of Chinese immigrants who came to the United States between the mid-19th and the mid-20th centuries. Luo describes how thousands of people migrated from China to the U.S., motivated by the Gold Rush. Though the labor of Chinese immigrants was initially welcomed, unfavorable economic conditions in the U.S. later set the stage for anti-Asian hostility and violence. Luo notes that this cycle repeated itself again and again, into the present day. While acceptance of newcomers is proffered when the need is great, fear, greed, and racism are never far behind. Yang narrates Luo's account with a precise, news anchor-style delivery, gravely reporting the facts. Yang allows the troubling information to speak for itself as Luo relates the fallout from laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and describes the horrific lynchings, beatings, and persecution of Chinese Americans. Despite everything, Luo observes that hope can be found in the stories of brave people who spoke out. VERDICT A must-listen for anyone interested in a different lens on U.S. history, similar to Kathleen DuVal's Native Nations and Four Hundred Souls, edited by Ibram X. Kendi.--Matthew Galloway

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

Giving voice to the first Asian Americans. An editor at theNew Yorker, Luo says that the impetus for writing this book was a random encounter on Manhattan's Upper East Side in the fall of 2016, a few weeks before the presidential election. While he was standing outside a restaurant with his family, a woman passed them, then turned around, yelling, "Go back to China!" That incident prompted Luo to write "An Open Letter to the Woman Who Told My Family to Go Back to China," which appeared on the front page of theNew York Times, generating an outpouring of reader response. When anti-Asian violence surged across the country in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Luo finally decided to write a narrative history of the Chinese experience in America. Such books of history are, of course, legion, and Luo relies on many of these, in addition to original archival research, to craft his own narrative. What distinguishes it from the others, however, is that Luo's book, though sweeping in scope, is also microscopic when it comes to stories. He writes about, for instance, not only Yung Wing, the first Chinese student to graduate from an American university (Yale, class of 1854) and later a prominent diplomat, but also many minor characters who have hitherto remained anonymous in the annals of history. Whether it is the 1871 Chinese massacre in Los Angeles or the brutal killing of Chinese in Rock Springs, Wyoming, in 1885, we now know, thanks to Luo's meticulous digging, the names and stories of some of the survivors of these infamous race riots. Readers interested in American history, not only Chinese American history, will savor these pages. An estimable and vital work of history that honors the Chinese American experience. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---