Chinese Chicago Race, Transnational Migration, and Community Since 1870 [Hardcover]

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.The first comprehensive, comparative and interpretive history of a highly important historical settlement of Chinese / Chinese Americans in the U.S., Chinese Chicago focuses on three crucial issues that define the Chinese in Chicago: race, transnational migration, and community, and investigates significant historical developments from the arrival of the three Moy brothers in the 1870s to the present tripartite communities. A unique and valuable study, sure to deepen our understanding of extra-national migratory studies in the development of modernity. 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 aspectl#)