The Chinese in America: A Narrative History

Like many Iris Chang fans I was shocked and saddened by her suicide; I wondered why she'd do it. Then I read her last book  The Chinese in America: A Narrative History , which I had purchased but not yet read, and I began to understand. It was one of the most depressing books I had ever read, and with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, it was clearly a 500 page cry for help.Given the subject matter, the abject depression came as a surprise. After all most people would view the Chinese experience in America as successful overall: yet another minority group overcomes prejudice and discrimination in the past to enjoy freedom and equality in the present. Not according to Iris Chang. Even the worst cynic would have to concede that the glass is half empty if not half full; Iris Chang saw the glass as completely empty and shattered on the floor.At times it seemed as if Iris was suggesting that the Chinese have suffered more than any other minority group in American history, an idea that African-Americans and Native Americans would both have a problem with. Even Japanese-Americans who have shared a similar history of prejudice and discrimination due to the average bigot's unwillingness (or inability) to distinguish between them can point to the WWII Internment as a trump card. So how does Iris even attempt to make the case? By accentuating the negative and eliminating the positive.Two examples of Iris' exaggeration come as she is detailing dozens of murders and hundreds of other violent crimes committed against Chinese in the western United States during the 19th Century. She calls 3 days of labor riots that segued into anti-Chinese violence and resulted in 4 dead and 14 wounded "a full-fledged pogrom" and a series of riots that totaled 62 dead "a level of violence that approached genocide." Now these are despicable crimes that deserve to be remembered and condemned but misusing words like "pogrom" and especially "genocide" only discredits her case.Politics seems to lead her astray in other areas. As part of a chapter on the horrible suffering (of course) of Chinese-Americans during the Red Scare, she includes an abbreviated history that follows the standard left-wing version of events and has the additional merit of being completely disproved by information that has come out since the fall of the Soviet Union, information Iris Chang could and SHOULD have been aware of. Briefly we now know beyond a SHADOW of a doubt that the Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss, Laurence Duggan, Harry Dexter White, I. F. Stone, and a number of other lesser lights were in fact paid Soviet agents, that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were riddled with Soviet spies. It turns out that despite his mistakes and even misconduct, Senator McCarthy got closer to the truth than those who condemned him.Of course the mere fact that Stalin was flooding the USA with agents doesn't prove that Mao was, and I for one am quite prepared to believe that totally innocent Chinese-Americans were being engulfed by the hysteria. However, Iris doesn't really help her case by suggesting that fears of Chinese espionage were every bit as unfounded as what turned out to be the entirely justified fears of Soviet espionage, nor by the fact that the only PRC agent she is willing to admit as proven, one Henry Liu, is mentioned only in a paragraph condemning the ROC government for assassinating him.The best she can do in the case of Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen, who was also the subject of her (IMHO much more evenly balanced) first book  Thread of the Silkworm  is admit that whether he "was a Communist in the United States cannot be determined" (as she reveals in  Thread of the Silkworm , Tsien was a VERY enthusiastic, even fanatical Communist in his later years in China) before claiming that "the evidence suggests that he was not" and then going on to condemn the way the US government treated him. Earth to Iris, one really needs to be CERTAIN that he was NOT a Communist in the United States before asserting that "In the end, the case against Tsien hurt rather than helped U.S. national defense. By deporting him, the nation lost a first-class scientist who almost certainly would have been a valuable adviser to the American lunar and missile programs." I for one am perfectly willing to consider the possibility that he was an innocent man railroaded by a racist American government, but it really DOES matter whether or not that was true because allowing a Communist agent to keep working on it would NOT have helped U.S. national defense!Still, the wheels don't completely come off until she gets to the case of Dr. Wen Ho Lee, who both Iris and I would agree was an innocent man very nearly railroaded into prison for a crime he didn't commit. Where we differ is on who was to blame for this travesty of justice. I blamed the investigators and prosecutors who did the actual railroading (and by extension the President who allowed it if he didn't order it) while Iris blamed the opposition members of Congress who allegedly SAID stupid things about the case.I really shouldn't have to tell you which of us is closer to the truth.However, not even politics can explain her insistence on rendering in considerable detail how some of the money sent "back home" by Chinese immigrants over the years from the 19th Century to the present was misspent and wasted. I don't doubt that this is true, but what exactly is her point? That it would have been better if the immigrants DIDN'T send money home?After detailing the horrors that abandoned baby girls faced in Chinese orphanages, Iris feels compelled to speculate on the possible prejudice and ethnic confusion those baby girls might face after growing up in white American adoptive families. Sure, it's a possibility, but since in return for that future risk, THEY GET TO GROW UP, it seems silly to dwell upon it.I could go on, but you get the drift. It is not that she makes things up; as always her research is extensive and meticulous. It is just that Iris Chang can be counted upon to put the worst possible interpretation on every single aspect of Chinese-American history. If it weren't for the tragedy of her suicide, it would be laughable.The trouble is that Iris Chang wasn't faking it; she wasn't a partisan hack spouting lies in order to advance a political agenda. Somewhere along the line for reasons we will never know Iris Chang truly began to view things this darkly, and a brilliant young historian's voice was stilled far too soon.Damn.Note: One of her long time friends, Paula Kamen, has written a biography:  Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind  and Iris' mother, Ying-Ying Chang, has also written a memoir:  The Woman Who Could Not Forget: Iris Chang Before and Beyond the Rape of Nanking - A Memoir .

Wile the theme is The Chinese in America, Iris Chang covered the social and economic events in China as well as in America like a sociologist and an economist.. One would learn how an immigrant group struggles to establishes itself in this Country of Immigrants.The book not only tells the stories of the poor Chinese peasants from Toishan, Guangdong who came to America in the mid 19tth century and how they suffered physically and emotionally as slave laborer, it also vividly depicts the societies of Chinese immigrants in different parts of America and how they interacted with whites around them at the time. Its scope of coverage over a period of almost two centuries included the subsequent waves of people from different parts of China who came to America with different motives and for a variety of reasons in later days. Many of thesse later immigrants were not peasants. Many of them were political refugees and students.America has a long history of discrimination and exclusion for "foreigners". The Irish,the Italian were treated like second class citizens in the earlier days in America. The Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other Asians suffered more and longer only because of the color of their skin. Some Americans do not seem to be able to recognize the fact that almost all but the Native American Indians were immigrants at one time or other. Most Americans todaay are less than five or six generations from the immigration of their forefathers. We had European immigrants in the 19th century and earlier 20th century. We have now Mexican and other South American immigrants in the 21st century. New Dreamers are who keep America growing strong today and tomorrow.This book is the most comprehensive studies of Chinese immigrants in America. It documented the painful struggles of the Chinese in finding acceptance in this country. It is a book should be read not only by Chinese Americans but also other newcomers to this land of Hope and Liberty.

It is very well researched and balanced book. She told many untold and forgotten stories of how Chinese American tried very, very hard just to make a meager living in the US.I cried when I read the book. In today’s rising hate against Chinese, one can only pray history will not repeat itself.

When we talk about minorities in US, Chinese Americans are seldom considered as one of them. This is partly due to the increasing number of Chinese nationals in US or rather in all around the world, and also due to the political hostility due to the rising China, but it should not be the reason for ignoring them and their struggle here as a minority ethnic group. They struggled, treated unfairly, discriminated, prejudiced and they are still fighting for their freedom and happiness, that needs to be recognized. Through her depiction of Chinese American history, we also see the American history and society from a quite different view that is not so omnipresent in history books.

Thank you, Iris Chang for this book. I hope that the demons that tormented your during your life no longer do so. It is a shame that Iris Chang only wrote three books, before she tragically took her own life. This book, like her other two books, is a gem. This book shares the experience of Chinese people in the United States. Chang brings their time in the United States to life as no other person can. From the earliest Chinese immigrants, to the building of the Central Pacific Railroad in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, to the struggle of China during World War II, the fall of China under Communist rule, to the present day lives of Chinese Americans. Iris Chang truly did just to Chinese Americans by writing this book.

long time ago, but it is still good

love the book

A comprehesive account of the chinese migrations to the United States starting back from the rush gold to our times. Very interesting and well informed.

Good Condition

Der Film schildert mal aus der anderen Perspektive den Befreiungskampf der Südtiroler um ihren Helden Andreas Hofer. Hier gibt es keine Schwarz-weiß-Malerei oder falsches Helden-Pathos, hier entsteht ein eindringliches Portrait eines Außenseiters: Des "Verräters" Raffl. Die schauspielerische Leistung ist hervorragend, die atmosphärische Dichte begeistert. Ich habe den Film erst im TV gesehen, deshalb bin ich sehr gespannt auf die Zusatz-Features und die geschichtliche Einordnung der Spielszenen. Eine Geschichtsstunde der besonderen Art.