Five Essential Books For Understanding Chinese American History
Every year I begin the semester by asking my college students, “What do you know about Asian American history? What have you been taught?” The most frequent answer I get is (a sheepish): “nothing.” When pressed, students will usually recall.
Many Americans, including college students, have limited knowledge of Asian American history. When asked about this topic, most recall only basic facts, such as the role of Chinese immigrants in building the transcontinental railroad or the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. These ideas are often learned from brief sections in high school textbooks. This knowledge gap is not natural but reflects how history is taught. The article highlights that Asians are the fastest-growing racial group in the United States today, with a history in the country spanning centuries. Chinese immigrants, for example, played a significant role in 19th-century America by draining swamps in California for agriculture, constructing railroads, and building towns and cities in the western United States.
Between 1850 and 1920, Chinese immigrants in the United States faced widespread discrimination through local and state laws that targeted their economic, political, cultural, and social lives. These laws included special taxes, restrictions on employment, segregation of Chinese schoolchildren, and bans on interracial marriage. Such policies were often framed under the label John Doe Chinaman, a generic term used to dehumanize Chinese immigrants in legal contexts. Despite these challenges, Chinese residents resisted and fought for civil rights, seeking recognition as full members of society rather than being reduced to anonymous or dehumanized identities. The article emphasizes that these discriminatory laws were not isolated incidents but part of a broader system designed to marginalize Chinese immigrants.
Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America: A History serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history of Asian Americans in the United States. The book traces the experiences of diverse Asian communities, including Filipino sailors, Chinese gold miners, Japanese farmers, and Vietnamese refugees, and the prejudice they encountered. It highlights how these groups contributed to the nation’s development while facing systemic discrimination. For younger readers, Lee has also published Made in Asian America, which presents a simplified version of these histories suitable for middle-grade audiences. The book includes stories of survival, resistance, and the harsh realities of America’s discriminatory past.
Chinese immigrants played a crucial role in 19th-century America’s westward expansion, most notably in building the transcontinental railroad, which connected California to the eastern states. Gordon Chang’s Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad explores this monumental achievement and the sacrifices made by Chinese workers. The book draws on historical records to uncover the personal stories of these workers, who labored under harsh conditions to lay tracks through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and across the Utah desert. Their contributions were essential to the railroad’s completion but often went unrecognized in mainstream historical narratives.
From 1882 onward, a series of exclusion laws restricted most Chinese immigration to the United States. In 1910, the U.S. government opened an immigration station on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay to process and detain Chinese immigrants. Many detainees spent days, weeks, or even months in these facilities. To cope with their confinement, Chinese immigrants carved poems into the walls of the barracks. The book Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940, authored by Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung, transcribes and translates these poetic messages. The poems express themes of grief, protest, and resilience, offering a powerful firsthand account of the immigrants’ experiences.
The Chinese Exclusion Acts of the late 19th century not only restricted immigration but also laid the groundwork for modern U.S. immigration control and mass detention. Brianna Nofil’s The Migrant’s Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration reveals how these laws established a system where federal immigration officials outsourced the detention of Chinese immigrants to local jails. This collaboration between immigration bureaucracy and the criminal justice system created a tradition that eventually led to the large-scale detention of immigrants in the United States today. The book traces the evolution of this system and its lasting impact on immigration policy.
Kelly Lytle Hernández’s *Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control* argues that U.S. immigration policies have been intentionally designed to enforce racial hierarchies. The book begins with the Haitian Revolution in 1791, highlighting early fears among Americans of Black abolitionists from the Caribbean and the resulting efforts to exclude them through laws. Hernández connects these anti-Black immigration policies to later measures targeting Chinese immigrants, Mexican border policies, and visa systems. The work demonstrates how the history of Chinese American exclusion is part of a broader pattern of racialized immigration control in the United States.
