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A social history of the role of the Chinese laundry on the survival of early Chinese immigrants in the U.S.during the Chinese Exclusion law period, 1882-1943, and in Canada during the years of the Head Tax, 1885-1923, and exclusion law, 1923-1947. Why and how Chinese got into the laundry business and how they had to fight discriminatory laws and competition from white-owned laundries to survive. Description of their lives, work demands, and living conditions. Reflections by a sample of children who grew up living in the backs of their laundries provide vivid first-person glimpses of the difficult lives of Chinese laundrymen and their families.
The definitive scholarly study of Chinese laundries and those who worked in them in the U.S. Considered a classic piece by students of overseas Chinese and Asian American studies, "The Chinese Laundryman" is also a landmark in the study of ethnic occupations and in the social and cultural history of the immigrant in America. *Lightning Print On Demand Title
Combining archival research in Chinese language sources with oral history interviews, Renqiu Yu examines the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance (CHLA), an organization that originated in 1933 to help Chinese laundry workers break their isolation in American society. Yu brings to life the men who labored in New York laundries, depicting their meager existence, their struggles against discrimination and exploitation, and their dreams of returning to China. The persistent efforts of the CHLA succeeded in changing the workers' status in American society and improving the image of the Chinese among the American public. Yu is especially concerned with the political activities of the CHLA, which was founded in reaction to proposed New York City legislation that would have put the Chinese laundries out of business. When the conservative Chinese social organization could not help the launderers, they broke with tradition and created their own organization. Not only did the CHLA defeat the legislative requirements that would have closed them down, but their "people's diplomacy" won American support for China during its war with Japan. The CHLA staged a campaign in the 1930s and 40s which took as its slogan, "To Save China, To Save Ourselves." Focusing on this campaign, Yu also examines the complex relationship between the democratically oriented CHLA and the Chinese American left in the 1930s.
The Chinese have become a vibrant part of Toronto’s multiculturalism, with no less than seven Chinatowns created since 1984. Short-listed for the 2013 Speaker’s Book Award and for the 2012 Heritage Toronto Award The modest beginnings of the Chinese in Toronto and the development of Chinatown is largely due to the completion of the CPR in 1885. No longer requiring the services of the Chinese labourers, a hostile British Columbia sent them eastward in search of employment and a more welcoming place. In 1894 Toronto’s Chinese population numbered fifty. Today, no less than seven Chinatowns serve what has become the second-largest visible minority in the city, with a population of half a million. In these pages, you will find their stories told through historical accounts, archival and present-day photographs, newspaper clippings, and narratives from old-timers and newcomers. With achievements spanning all walks of life, the Chinese in Toronto are no longer looking in from outside society’s circle. Their lives are a vibrant part of the diverse mosaic that makes Toronto one of the most multicultural cities in the world.
A chorus of immigrant voices populates Judy Fong Bates's graceful and poignant first collection. Denizens of the ubiquitous small towns around Ontario, as far from their native land as can be imagined yet united by their proximity to the local Chinese laundry, her characters have in common their driving desire to assimilate, to fit in, to belong to a "majority" culture. But they are also people trapped by a certain cultural pride in confronting a world that may feign acceptance while at the same time reminding them that they are "other." In the words of the Toronto Globe and Mail, Judy Fong Bates's "deceptively simple narratives expose the hopes and hardships that define her characters' lives." Her graceful writing is full of compassion, insight, and honesty; it opens our eyes to the commonality of what it is to be human.
Exploring the multifaceted Chinese experience in New York City, Xinyang Wang persuasively illustrates that economic forces more than racism influenced immigrantsO life decisions.
Remapping Asian American History discusses new frameworks such as transnationalism, the political contexts of international migrations, and a multipolar approach to the study of contemporary U.S. race relations. Collectively, the essays in this volume challenge some long-held assumptions about Asian-American communities and point to new directions in Asian American historiography. Visit our website for sample chapters!
This memoir describes the discoveries, many unexpected, when a Chinese American psychology professor retires and reinvents himself as a public historian of Chinese in America. Author of four books on the social history of Chinese family-run businesses, he has given dozens of lectures around the country. A Chinese American Odyssey provides a fascinating and insightful behind-the-scenes look at the processes involved in researching, writing, publishing, and promoting books. Writers of books on any topic will find useful information.
Offering a textured history of the Chinese in America since their arrival during the California Gold Rush, this work includes letters, speeches, testimonies, oral histories, personal memoirs, poems, essays, and folksongs. It provides an insight into immigration, work, family and social life, and the longstanding fight for equality and inclusion.