Hannah Liu’s Reviews > The Making of Asian America: A History > Status Update

lol my workplace mentioned

Been awhile since I’ve picked this up since I’ve been low on brain energy 😪 wish I had read this chapter earlier so I knew where the Plain of Jars was for last Thursday’s NYT crossword

Chinese people were the first undocumented immigrants and TIL that they crossed the southern border from Mexico, using crossings like Eagle Pass. The border patrol, and use of deterrence tactics, raids, surveillance, and mass deportations all started in response to Asian immigration. How did I not know this??

super interesting to read about the attitudes towards Chinese immigrants in Hawai’i — since they came to the islands to work on the sugar cane plantations, they were seen by native Hawaiians as extensions of the colonizing force that was dispossessing them of the land and sovereignty.

did not learn about coolies in the Caribbean/Latin America in APWH, but the dots are connecting now. So the reason why Peruvian-Chinese cuisine — chifa — exists is not because of “immigration” as Wikipedia suggests, but a system of indentured servitude. And it’s pretty much entirely a fusion from Cantonese food bc that’s where the workers came from :O