The Chinese in America: A History from Gold Mountain to the New Millennium

This new collection of essays demonstrates how a politics of polarity have defined the 150-year experience of Chinese immigration in America. Volume editor Cassel relates how the well-publicized accusations of espionage against scientist Wen Ho Lee at the nuclear facility at Los Alamos can be understood as part of an ongoing systemic and institutionalized racism in American society. Chinese-Americans have been courted as ‘model workers’ by American business, but also continue to be perceived as perpetual foreigners. The contributors offer engrossing accounts of the lives of immigrants, their tenacity, their diverse lifeways, from the arrival of the first Chinese gold miners in 1849 into the present day. The 21st century begins as a uniquely ‘Pacific Century’ in the Americas, with an increasingly large presence of Asians in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The book will prove to be a valuable resource on the Asian immigrant experience for researchers and students in Chinese American studies, Asian American history, immigration studies, and American history. The Chinese in America is published in cooperation with the Chinese Historical Society of Greater San Diego and Baja California.