Chinese America: The Untold Story of America's Oldest New Community

(Paperback)

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From award-winning author Peter Kwong and Duanka Micevic comes a definitive portrait of Chinese Americans, one of the oldest immigrant groups and fastest-growing communities in the United States. Beginning with stories of Chinese frontiersmen who came to the West Coast by the thousands in the mid-nineteenth century and continuing to the high-tech transnationals who have helped spark the development of today's booming Chinese American "ethnoburbs," this engrossing narrative recounts stories of extraordinary hardship, discrimination, and success.

Chinese America is a landmark analysis that draws on firsthand reporting in Asia and the U.S. Offering a new picture of the country's development, Kwong and Miscevic provide the first comprehensive report on the suburban immigrant communities that are transforming America. Urban ghettos continue to host some of the country's poorest immigrants, but Chinese Americans now live in the suburbs in similar proportions to whitesand have brought with them Chinese supermarket chains, language schools, and growing clout in America and Asia. Exploring the burgeoning tradeand underlying conflictsbetween China and the U.S., Chinese America reveals the complex connections between immigration, globalization, and foreign policy in our time.

Reviews

"An incisive analysis . . . indispensable to anyone interested in New Yorks history." —Mike Wallace, co-author of Gotham

"A splendid work of class struggles and social movements that demystifies commonplace notions of a homogeneous or socially isolated Chinatown. A must read." —Gary Okihiro

Author Bio

Peter Kwong is the author of several books, including Chinese America (with Duanka Micevic); Chinatown, N.Y.; and Forbidden Workers, all available from The New Press. He is Professor of Asian American Studies and Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College and a professor of sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY. He lives in New York City.

Duanka Micevic is a writer and translator with a Ph.D. from Columbia University. She lives in New York City.