Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming

by Ava Chin

A sweeping narrative history of the Chinese Exclusion Act through an intimate portrayal of one family’s epic journey to lay down roots in America

* A Good Morning America , TIME , Book Riot, and Kirkus Most-Anticipated Book *  

As the only child of a single mother in Queens, Ava Chin found her family’s origins to be shrouded in mystery. She had never met her father, and her grandparents’ stories didn’t match the history she read at school. Mott Street traces Chin’s quest to understand her Chinese American family’s story. Over decades of painstaking research, she finds not only her father but also the building that provided a refuge for them all.

Breaking the silence surrounding her family’s past meant confronting the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—the first federal law to restrict immigration by race and nationality, barring Chinese immigrants from citizenship for six decades. Chin traces the story of the pioneering family members who emigrated from the Pearl River Delta, crossing an ocean to make their way in the American West of the mid-nineteenth century. She tells of their backbreaking work on the transcontinental railroad and of the brutal racism of frontier towns, then follows their paths to New York City.

In New York’s Chinatown she discovers a single building on Mott Street where so many of her ancestors would live, begin families, and craft new identities.  She follows the men and women who became merchants, “paper son” refugees, activists, and heads of the Chinese tong, piecing together how they bore and resisted the weight of the Exclusion laws. She soon realizes that exclusion is not simply a political condition but also a personal one.

Gorgeously written, deeply researched, and tremendously resonant, Mott Street uncovers a legacy of exclusion and resilience that speaks to the American experience, past and present.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Biography, Audiobook, Race, Aapi

400 pages, Paperback

First published April 25, 2023

About the author

Ava Chin is the author of the forthcoming MOTT STREET (Penguin Press, April 2023). Her food memoir, "Eating Wildly," was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award 2014 (Food) and named to Library Journal's Best Books of 2014 list (Memoir). The editor of "Split," she's written for the NY Times (as the Urban Forager), the LA Times Magazine, the Village Voice, and SPIN. Before earning an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, and a PhD from the University of Southern California, she was a downtown slam poet who contributed to the alternative rock band Soul Coughing's album El Oso. A professor of creative nonfiction and journalism at the City University of New York, Ava lives in Manhattan with her husband and daughter.

You can purchase books here: https://www.amazon.com/Ava-Chin/e/B00...

Reviews

[Celeste Ng]

Ava Chin accomplishes an astonishing feat: by tracing five generations of her own Chinese American ancestors, she also traces the story of Chinese exclusion, illuminating an often-ignored part of our national past. Mott Street is a vibrant and moving family story, but it’s also essential reading for understanding not just Chinese American history, but American history—and the American present.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little disappointed in the book. It’s a fascinating history and family story but I felt like the author veered too far into the speculative at times. Sometimes she would start stories with phrases like “I wonder if this is what it was like”, “Maybe she felt like this” which is fine but other times the writing was quite florid and read like bad historical fiction.

I’m not sure why she chose to include some dialogue and internal monologues she’d have no way of knowing. It was very inconsistent and jarring to read those passages.

I don’t like that sort of made-up dialogue in nonfiction in general but I felt like it stood out even more because she flipped and flopped between very well-researched paragraphs, some with made-up scenarios and discussion and sections where she was making it clear this was her own musings.

I’m not sure why she made that choice and it distracted from what seemed to be a thoroughly researched, very interesting story.

[Christine Liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming is named for a street in New York City’s Chinatown where ancestors on both sides of Ava Chin’s family lived. It’s a nonfiction work tracing the history of the relatives who first made their way from China to America at the end of the 19th century, but it reads like some of my favorite epic multigenerational sagas.

Anti-Chinese sentiment in the US is as old as Chinese immigration itself, and there have been plenty of times in history when it has spiraled into shocking acts of violence against Chinese American communities. In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law meant to bar additional immigration from China into the US, and this book gives a human dimension to just some of the individuals and families who were impacted by it.

The meticulous research into her family’s genealogy really comes through in every page of this book. In one section, Ava writes “I feel a heaviness in the chest, like it’s hard to take a deep breath. Over the course of the next hour before lunch and then again in the midafternoon, I take several breaks away from my desk and the articles and books that are breaking my heart.” This is a deeply personal history, and it should be. Knowing the country you live in has created policies intended to exclude and disenfranchise people like you is nothing if not personal.

This book does a really good job of bringing the human dimension of this chapter of American history to light. It also does a good job of showing how the harmful legacies of exclusionary laws continue to cast a long shadow into the present. My own family’s immigration story is very different from the one here, but there are many parts of this book that resonated with me and will sit with me for a long time.

[Sarah Lopreiato · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fascinating, well-researched look into the life of Chinese immigrants in New York through the stories of the author’s family. It was also, unfortunately, pretty dull. I enjoyed the beginning and the end, but would’ve had a much better time reading this if it had been quite a few pages shorter. That being said, I learned a lot and I’m happy that I read it. It was certainly a fitting read on my commute to Canal Street, and I might walk past 37 Mott Street next time I have a few extra minutes before work.

I do feel a bit guilty about only giving this book three stars; it was, after all, a valuable read on a topic that interests me. And I don’t want to discount the story that Chin is telling, because it is an important one to tell. But I just didn’t like this book as much as I wanted to. I wish it had been advertised as more of a historical account than a memoir.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book by a fifth-generation Chinese-American and New Yorker shows how significant events and policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act affected four generations of her family and still influence attitudes today. I liked the way Chin combined in-depth research and historical reporting with personal stories and somewhat fictionalized perspectives that filled the gaps in the historical record.

[Stefanie Chow · Rating 2 out of 5]

it’s definitely a valuable subject for a story. i wish the writing was better. i wanted to like it, but it just wasn’t very good in terms of the organization or the prose

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tugs at my heart because of the many similarities of the authors family and mines in regards to the immigration process when my parents came over. And I’m probably a bit biased in giving it a 5 rating because I can totally relate to the authors story and how the Chinese and their immediate families function, though mines on the other coast in Seattle. Ava IMHO did a great job in researching her families past and even when she was writing about someone she’s never met because either they have passed or no oral history down the line was communicated. I didn’t mind the “speculative” opinion in her writings, because honestly if you know Chinese, that’s probably what happened. A great book and makes me want to start writing my family’s memoir.

[Ann OConnell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Got so many great reviews but I just felt it was weighted down with minute details about the authors family.

[Daphyne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful tribute to this author’s family and the lives they hacked out of a country that long failed to see their value. Bumped this up to 5 stars for the last twenty pages alone.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

sooo good please read my dear friends!!!! learned so much about the history of chinese immigrants + chinese americans over the past 150-so years. i barely knew anything about the chinese exclusion act and the details of the way chinese immigrants were treated when trying to enter the country. like i knew it wasn't great obviously but there were many moments where it was genuinely hard to read.

also did you know Back Then if you were a white US born person and you married a chinese immigrant your US citizenship would get revoked and you would become undocumented basically i love it here

[Katie Mac · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

4.5, rounded up. I knew about the Chinese Exclusion Act Congress passed in 1882 from an academic/purely historical standpoint, but Ava Chin's framing her family history around this makes the Act feel even more dehumanizing. It's clear that Chin did an extensive amount of research with primary sources, but this reads more like a multigenerational family saga than a dry history book; it was tough to put down, especially once I got to know the family members better. I wish I had gotten to know more about Chin's mom and dad--especially her dad's political legacy--but that would have made for a much longer book.

Grab this to read for AAPI.NH Heritage Month!

[Amy Mae · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't the kind of book I typically read. However, this year I decided to challenge myself to read outside my comfort zone. This was the nonfiction book club pick (for the book discussion at the library I work at).

I was surprised at how easy it was for me to get into the book. It was hard for me to keep the family members straight, but once I decided to just enjoy each story as its own thing, I found myself getting into the book more.

I learned a lot about the history of the United States (and a bit about China) that wasn't taught in school. I didn't know that the Chinese couldn't become citizens and that they needed to be snuck in to the United States. I felt sad throughout this book about the way that people treat each other. But I do believe it is important to open ourselves up to what is really happening all around us.

Reading this book opened my eyes to so much that is happening around the world and how the issues that happened in the past are still relevant today.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is interesting that the reviews are all over the place. I chose this as one of Book Riot’s Read Harder 2024 challenge topics: Read a History Book by a BIPOC Author. Some people expressed disappointment in the fact that the author is speculative at times. This did not bother be at all. I thought this was beautifully written and narrated by the author. It was an intimate story about her ancestors - many of whom she only learned about through the process of her research, yet also full of interesting factual information about Chinese Americans, the immigration process and its evolution as it specifically related to Chinese immigrants, the Chinese Exclusion Act, NYC- and NYC’s Chinatown. I loved it and highly recommend !

[Christy-JC Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing achievement! I’m stunned by the way Chin is able to tell her family stories in a way that reads like a page turning novel, spans over 100 years, and incorporates so much detailed and solid history. I wish that I could create something like this with my family history and documents, and I know how difficult a task this would be.
This book is also so important for understanding American history better. Chin brings to life the determination, patience, love, and humanity of people who so often are forgotten in the telling of American history. And the immigrant story could not be more relevant today. Highly recommend. I wonder who else I might encourage to read this.

[Amy Brown (amylikestoreadalot) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned A LOT about the history of Chinese in the US-so infuriating about how they were treated and the Exclusion Acts from the late 1800's until almost the mid 1900's. Ava Chin tells the stories of her ancestors, and it was fascinating. The first 1/3 had a lot of history and I wished the dates were included more. My favorite part was the section about her great grandmas and how they came from China and Hong Kong (separately) to live in the same apartment building in Chinatown, NYC. It's not a book to fly through, there's a lot of history and people mentioned, but I found it very interesting!

[Liberty {LittyLibby} · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had no idea that the Chinese Exclusion Act lasted for 61 years.
This is the epic story of the author's family's migration to Canada and the United States, spanning decades. It's a deep dive into her research and genealogy, exposing the heartbreaking loss and hardship that Chinese Americans and Chinese immigrants had to face.
I'm saddened to know that so many years later, not much has changed. We live in a day when hateful ignorant people push Asian women in front of trains. God help us.

[Elizabeth Coscia · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a special read!!! the streets I grew up walking with my poi poi and gung gung, and where my mom grew up.
Grateful to Ava Chin for allowing us to follow five generations of her family as the backdrop to teach me so much that is erased about the Chinese Exclusion act and its implications today. Extra special to see Toisanese peoples stories’ being told. can’t wait to give this to my mom :)

[Bethany Tompkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely loved listening to Ava tell the story of her family. Her commitment to understanding and documenting their history is inspirational. I was amazed by her extensive travels! An empathy builder for sure, this was major educator for me on the Chinese Exclusion Act and the many subsequent reiterations of it.

[Felicia Roff Tunnah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding story and history of a Chinese American family alongside the Chinese exclusion laws - which I never realized were in effect for over 50 years. Shameful that this is not more widely discussed.

[Liz Dzwonczyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the author’s family anthology. Very thoroughly researched, it still seems to me to be missing a few threads that could have connected things together. Very well written and provides a story to the true impacts of Chinese Exclusion.

[Kayla Boss · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is such an interesting exploration of five generations of Ava Chin’s Chinese American family, the journey from China to america, documenting the interpersonal as well as the social and political aspects that dominated the experiences of each family member. Chin focuses on particularly on the Chinese exclusion act, and its significance on the individuals directly impacted as well as the lingering impacts to the present day. this book is thoroughly researched and although its nonfiction it also reads as a multigenerational family saga

[Sofia Tjia · Rating 4 out of 5]

reading some non fiction for a change and i loved it! great book and great story abt my fav area in ny + Chinese-American history

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

honestly maybe 2.5? it’s incredibly well researched, and i learned so much about the history of sf and nyc chinatowns and the chinese exclusion act. that being said, i really did not enjoy the writing style and found it to be very speculative at times. i wasn’t quite sure if it was a personal history or a work of fiction in some of the storytelling.

[C. R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a slog. This book reads like a nonfiction writer trying to write fiction for an audience she thinks is stupid, without consulting an editor. The mixed memoir?/biography?/fictionalization? is 348 pages long, and would benefit greatly from having 100 of those pages removed. The author seems unable to differentiate between what information is of interest to the general public and what information is only interesting to an immediate family member. I wonder that her editor did not tell her this and instead allowed this extremely bloated book into print.

The narrative would have been much more compelling if it had just been the straight fiction retelling Chin obviously wanted it to be. I came to this conclusion given the sheer number of liberties Chin takes with distant family members’ innermost thoughts and feelings and (excruciatingly detailed) day-by-day “accounts” of their lives. I understand that in order for nonfiction to invoke an element of human interest, you must occasionally speculate about a long-deceased person’s feelings, but Chin takes this device to the extreme, undermining her authorial authority early and often with phrases like “she must have thought,” “he must have felt,” and “I imagine.” This occurred to the point that any time a paragraph was not obviously historical context or included a credible source, I treated it as a kind of “familial fanfiction” that she’d carefully curated to make her family members look good to a modern audience.

I say that this book should have been a novel; however, judging from the conversations that Chin DID fictionalize, which she marked with italics, now I am not even convinced a fictionalization could save Mott Street if it continued to include cringe-worthy lines like “he couldn’t let her…slip away/[he] knew he couldn’t let her get away” (90, 140), “all I want is you” (93), and “oh, my love, my love, my love” (333). If you have given yourself permission to invent dialogue, can’t you at least make it good? Instead, her family members read like characters in a melodrama.

Chin’s heavy-handed tendency to insert herself into every few paragraphs of the text distracted me from the story and made me feel as though she did not trust me to draw the appropriate conclusions about her (incredibly morally simple) text. Her constant interjections telling me that discovering something during her research “[made her] breath catch” (49), “[made her] grow cold” (49), caused “a heaviness [to descend] onto [her] body” (93), “[made her] feel queasy” (94), caused her to “immediately burst into tears” (95, 201), “fill[ed her] with both rage and fear” (96), “fill[ed her] with rage” (134), caused her to “feel a heaviness in the chest” (264), or “[drove her] bonkers” (307) caused ME to feel as though she thought I was an idiot. By the end of Mott Street, I found myself yearning to reconnect with my own estranged family members, Nuance and Subtlety.

Given the nature and length of Mott Street, you would expect anyone picking up this book to have at least a passing interest in Asian American social issues to the point that “the Chinese Exclusion Act was dehumanizing, debilitating, and wrong” is not a radical thought. However, while the purpose of this book is ostensibly the lessons of the past, it does not go into much detail about how we can apply these lessons to the modern-day racism plaguing Asian Americans. On this topic, it dedicates only 6 pages (94-97 and 338-340) before apparently deciding this detracts too much from the other 342 speculating about each and every member in her family tree.

One of the shorter (but still telling) examples of this is when Chin imagines her great-great grandmother Chun arriving in the U.S. in a cargo crate. Chin “imagined how magnificent [Chun] would have appeared, when the crate was finally opened with a crowbar by the smuggler on the other side, and Chun emerged naked like a dark-haired version of Bottocelli’s Venus, framed not by an iridescent shell but, instead, industrial cargo crates, sawdust falling like sea-foam from the soles of her bare feet. This was before I realized Chun was a young mother traveling with an infant. She would not have been naked, of course, that was my teenage imagination at work, nor would a twenty-one-year-old mother have entered the country stuffed in a crate with a baby, who could cry at any moment and alert the authorities” (144). Besides being a strange description and of course not actually happening, for five pages, Chin then goes on to describe how Chun took the Canadian Pacific Railroad and then a horse-drawn carriage, making sure to agonize over every possible thing that could have gone wrong on the journey (but didn’t). See how this made for frustrating reading x70?

I am a Chinese American woman, and I opened this book hoping to feel inspired by and connected with the stories of my fellow Asian Americans. Instead, however, I found a self-indulgent, myopic family portrait that reads much less like a research enterprise than a vanity project. Quite literally, Chin describes every single one of her family members as either “handsome” (35, 157, 173, 257, 290, 293), “beautiful” (38, 122, 144, 220, 269, 279, 322, 326), “pretty” (35, 167, 233, 325), or “good-looking” (17, 230, 304, 319). The only exception to this flattery fest is her great-great aunt Elva. “At thirty-one years old, [Elva’s] potato-shaped face was beginning to get a certain hardening around the edges, and then there was the sudden appearance of small lines around her eyes whenever she smiled” (85).

Chin’s treatment of Elva, an intersex woman, troubles me. Chin states that she was "hesitant to reveal [Elva’s physicality] not only for some sense of wanting to protect [her] aunt’s privacy – ridiculous, since she’s long dead – but also to protect [Elva’s husband] Uncle Dek. Will you see him as just another emasculated Asian man? Will you question Dek’s sexuality?” (98). However, I found that Chin struggled less with WHETHER to include Elva’s intersexuality than how to include it tactfully, which she did not. Instead, Chin goes full-on exhibitionist, describing in great detail how Elva’s first husband runs screaming from their marital bedchamber and how Elva is forced to submit to a humiliating medical exam for an official diagnosis. (Throughout all of this, I found myself wondering why Chin did not explain why this diagnosis took so long, given Elva’s mother “Sarah had dressed, clothed, and bathed Elva as a child” (91).) In addition, if Chin is so worried about readers emasculating her family members, then perhaps she shouldn’t have done so herself by stating that her grandfather “was so pretty that if not for the short-cropped haircut, the starched white collar, and the jacket and tie, he could have been mistaken for a girl” (35).

This book takes an interminable amount of time to actually end. The entirety of the final chapter with its six “ending” scenes (visiting Dek Foon and Elva’s graves, visiting her great-great grandfather's grave, a general discussion about race, a final discussion about her father, watching lion dance performers during Chinese New Year, and looking out the window of Mott Street) feel like “victory laps” for a race Chin did not win. In addition, I do not think the image of Chin transferring a handful of dirt between Elva and Dek Foon’s graves was nearly as poignant or impressive as she seems to think.

I cannot believe I am saying this, but the 348-page book feels incomplete. Of course, I do not think the solution is MORE Mott Street, but Chin’s extremely brief mention that “when Elva refused to give Uncle Johnny all of her and Dek Foon’s money, Johnny…had her committed to a mental institution in Brooklyn” feels odd (329). Given the rest of the book, I would have expected Chin to dive into a ten-page (completely made up) sequence of Elva in the asylum, with plenty of “she must have felt…” and “reading this report made my blood boil” sprinkled in for good measure, so in a way, I suppose I actually have to commend Chin for her uncharacteristic show of restraint. However, I do not think I can do the same for her refusing to go into nearly any detail about her parents’ relationship and the animosity between her maternal grandparents and father, which was set up as the entire premise of the book.

Chin’s contentious relationship with her father ends up having surprisingly little bearing on either her or the book’s ending. However, perhaps her dissatisfaction with Stanley shows itself in other ways, namely, bashing Stanley’s relatives.

Throughout the book, Chin shows herself again and again to be much more spiritually/sympathetically close to “her Ng-Doshim side” than her “Chin side.” This appears most obviously when she pits her maternal relatives Chun and Doshim against her paternal relatives Yulan and Chin On, with Chun and Doshim being the obvious winners in terms of education/class/marital happiness, etc. Chin even includes a paragraph of Yulan feeling inferior to Chun as they pass each other on move-in day to 37 Mott Street, Chun quite literally heading UP to her apartment on the floor above while Yulan heads down (I know, you cannot fudge the locations of apartments, but because this is a hypothetical encounter in the first place, you have to assume Chin knew what she was doing) (220-221).

Given that Chin grew up only knowing her maternal side of the family, it makes sense for her to favor her mother’s side. Even so, I had a difficult time determining whether her bias against her paternal side was simply due to her having less information about them, her resentment against her father, or them truly being as “villainous” as she described. And for a reader to doubt whether half of your book is true is not a good look for a nonfiction writer.

Finally, the book’s feeling of incompleteness may simply be due to the fact that Chin is currently researching a sequel called The Queen of Spring. According to this article (https://www.gc.cuny.edu/news/mott-str...), The Queen of Spring “will examine the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act on multiple generations of her family in New York's Chinatown from the 1950s through the 1970s.”

Unlike Chin, I will let that statement speak for itself.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a stellar work of nonfiction that weaves family history with the history of national and international events. Highly recommend.

[Chrissy MacLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is technically non-fiction as it documents the history of the author’s family as Chinese-Americans, but it is done in a way I have never seen before - creative non-fiction. Essentially, the author has told as much factual information as she could uncover about her family’s history as it relates to the Chinese Exclusion Act, but then, sprinkled throughout these facts, are conjectures of how her family members might have felt. At first I was a little put off by it, but it turned out to be really lovely.

I also learned so much about the history of Chinese immigrants in America that had not been covered in my white-washed history classes when I was in school. This was definitely worth a read!

[Vivian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. As a Chinese American adoptee, I felt like it filled in a lot of gaps in my own understanding of America's history with Chinese immigration and China. Despite having taken courses in race and ethnicity and Asian gender and sexuality, I didn't know so much of the history laid out in this book. It felt like essential reading, and I'd encourage anybody to read it on those grounds alone.

In terms of the writing, I really enjoyed Chin's careful balance of the well-researched, historical record and hypotheticals on what her ancestors may have felt throughout their lives. It provided a real sense of weight to the book that touched on the emotional core and immense pain of exclusion. Her ability to get into that headspace and take us with her was a gift to the reader, as well as testament to her empathy and prowess as a writer. Her writing gave her ancestors new life that really drove home their personhood after all these years. Also, the dichotomies she sets out between the two families (particularly Chin-On and Dek Foon) transform their lives into this fascinating drama almost made to be read.

I personally struggled to follow the family tree at times, especially in the last 100 pages as everybody's story starts intertwining. Chin tries to mitigate this as much as possible, but it still impacted my experience. I recommend that future readers keep a bookmark on the family tree for easy reference.

I also hoped that Chin would address her mother and father, especially because her father did have an impactful and relevant political career. I recognize and respect that these are her parents--individuals who could read the book and that she's still potentially maintaining a relationship with them--and so I understand this may be too much to ask of her. Nonetheless, I felt a disappointed when I reached the end. I knew the intimacies (and hypothetical inner thoughts) of great-great grandparents, but barely heard a word about her mother. In a book so determined to keep legacy alive and understand our origins, I felt hollow without this dive into her parents.

[Danielle | Dogmombookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

The breadth of this book is astonishing.

Following three families from the 1880s to present day as they lay down roots in Chinatown New York, more precisely Mott Street, very precisely one building, Chin traces her family's immigration illustrating how it serves as a microcosm for Chinese American history in the exclusion and attempted erasure of Chinese settling in the US.

"It is a general rule of thumb among researchers and historians alike, that it is the written record that is the gold standard, and the family stories that are long on twisted falsehoods, embellishment, and tall tales. But when you're Chinese and American, with roots that stretch back to the exclusion era, it is the historical record that is a fabulous fabrication, and the oral stories, passed down from generation to generation, like rare, evolving heirlooms that ultimately hold the keys to the truth."

I found myself so swept up by each of her family members' stories. Their lives in China, how they met their spouses or were set up, the pain of the strangeness, newness and loneliness of a new country that repeatedly denies you. I was inspired and demolished by Dek Foon's perseverance for Asian civil rights, to be seen and treated as not just an American, but as a fellow human. I found strength in the stories of Chun and Yulan and Elva Lisk.

I marvel at the way that Chin has been able to tell, on the one hand, her family story through the eyes of three separate patriarchs, but on the other hand, a representation of so many Chinese families' stories about immigrating and persevering and making America their home. From building the transcontinental railroad, only to be met with the Page Act in 1875 which barred forced laborers and "prostitutes" (requiring women to prove that they aren't), to the Gary act which de facto required all Asians to carry a passport or be presumed guilty, to the Chinese Exclusion act, which got reapproved decade after decade, Chinese Americans have faced a daunting shuttering of doors. It is absolutely essential to tell these stories as part of our American history.

An incredible book

[Makayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read, one that details personal family history that you never would've learned in the textbooks full of pictures of the transcontinental railroad. Ava Chin describes her ancestors history and how they found their way to New York City and Mott Street throughout the Exclusion Act in such eye opening detail that even she was caught unawares from time to time. I personally enjoyed it as an audiobook, hearing the correct pronunciations of words and her emotion when talking about visiting her families graves. This is a wonderful culmination of histories and immigration, shedding light on the personal stories that many other immigrant families still go through today.

[Rebecca Bratspies · Rating 5 out of 5]

This books is fantastic! It is beautiful, poignant and full of important insights into how American mistreated its Chinese immigrants for nearly a century. I thought I knew about the Chinese Exclusion Act, but Ava Chin made me feel the raw, emotion of exclusion in a way I never had before. Kept thinking about my own immigrant forebearers. Very jealous that Chin has so much information about her family and what she does with it is truly a work of art. Highly recommend!