Book Review

Iris Chang, author of the acclaimed The Rape of Nanking, has a new book about the struggles and achievements of the Chinese in America. Her new book, The Chinese In America: A Narrative History has received excellent customer reviews at Amazon.com.

The book was recently reviewed in the Far Eastern Economic Review (subscription required). Some excerpts:

Chang has written the first comprehensive account of the Chinese-American experience. Other nonfiction books examining Chinese-Americans tend to focus on limited aspects of the immigrant experience, while Chang tackles the entire history, breaking it down into three main waves, starting with the gold seekers and migrant labourers from China's coastal cities in the 1800s. The Chinese were active in the California Gold Rush in the 1850s and worked on the American transcontinental railway in the late 1860s. The story of Chinese professionals of the mid-20th century forms the book's middle and, finally, Chang writes about the wave of immigrants entering the U.S. in the last two decades of the 20th century.

At 500 pages, Chan's book is a comprehensive account that relates experiences and incidents in an engaging and thought-provoking way. At times, she tends to belabour the ill-treatment of the Chinese, when her facts and anecdotes garnered from impeccable research can tell the story fully on their own. The final result is an important book that fills a gaping hole in Asian-American studies.