Chinese Chicago: Race, Transnational Migration, and Community Since 1870

Asian America

by Ping Linghu

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.

Genres: Politics

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 18, 2012

Reviews

[Viral · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a useful, if dry, compilation of important historical work contextualizing the history of the Chinese community in Chicago, with a particular focus on the 1870-1960s period. A valuable piece of historiography, and definitely helps explain a bunch of details about Chicago's Chinatown, but there weren't that many interesting arguments advanced by this book. Still, useful if what you need is details about the Chinese community in Chicago, especially in the early 20th century.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating historical and sociological information collected and laid out in readable form even for the non-academic.

Occasionally the author over-broadly generalizes, particularly regarding China's political history. Sometimes the author will make a generalization also that she contradicts within her own text -- for example in chapter 5 in discussing the power of merchant immigrants, she states that "secure in their wealth and power , the Chinese gentry-scholars had little incentive to emigrate." In that case, when three paragraphs on she says that "the Hip Sing Tong was established in the 1870s by a scholar who had lost his business." After the first statement quoted above, the second begs for explication.

All in all, a good read.