Chinese Chicago:
Race, Transnational Migration, and Community Since 1870
By Huping Ling
Published by Stanford University Press, 2012
Review
“A unique and valuable study, sure to deepen our understanding of extra-national migratory studies in the development of modernity.”—John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York University & Museum of Chinese in America
“Huping Ling, a prolific and leading scholar of Chinese America, gives us yet another refreshingly exciting book. An excellent community study, it offers fascinating stories about various aspects of Chinese America life in the community, ranging from food, laundry-shop work, school life, and family life in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Chicago. The book situates these stories in larger contexts, specially the Chinese American transnational world, providing extraordinary insights into the connection between the local and the global. It also connects the past to the present by taking an in-depth look at the post-war forces that have transformed and continue to transform Chinese Chicago.”—Yong Chen, author of Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943: A Trans-Pacific Community
Product Description
Numerous studies have documented the transnational experiences and local activities of Chinese immigrants in California and New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Less is known about the vibrant Chinese American community that developed at the same time in Chicago. In this sweeping account, Huping Ling offers the first comprehensive history of Chinese in Chicago, beginning with the arrival of the pioneering Moy brothers in the 1870s and continuing to the present.
Ling focuses on how race, transnational migration, and community have defined Chinese in Chicago. Drawing upon archival documents in English and Chinese, she charts how Chinese made a place for themselves among the multiethnic neighborhoods of Chicago, cultivating friendships with local authorities and consciously avoiding racial conflicts. Ling takes readers through the decades, exploring evolving family structures and relationships, the development of community organizations, and the operation of transnational businesses. She pays particular attention to the influential role of Chinese in Chicago’s academic and intellectual communities and to the complex and conflicting relationships among today’s more dispersed Chinese Americans in Chicago.
About the Author
Huping Ling is Professor of History at Truman State University and Executive Editor for the Journal of Asian American Studies. She has published eleven books and over one hundred articles. Most recently, she coedited Asian American History and Culture: An Encyclopedia (2010).
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