The 1911 revolution in China sparked debates that politicized and divided Chinese communities in the United States. People in these communities affirmed traditional Chinese values and expressed their visions of a modern China, while nationalist feelings emboldened them to stand up for their rights as an integral part of American society. When Japan threatened the China's young republic, the Chinese response in the United States revealed the limits of Chinese nationalism and the emergence of a Chinese American identity. Shehong Chen investigates how Chinese immigrants to the United States transformed themselves into Chinese Americans during the crucial period between 1911 and 1927. Chen focuses on four essential elements of a distinct Chinese American identity: support for republicanism over the restoration of monarchy; a wish to preserve Confucianism and traditional Chinese culture; support for Christianity, despite a strong anti-Christian movement in China; and opposition to the Nationalist party's alliance with the Soviet Union and cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party. Sensitive and enlightening, Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American documents how Chinese immigrants survived exclusion and discrimination, envisioned and maintained Chineseness, and adapted to American society.

Collection of essays by Chinese-American scholar Him Mark Lai; published in association with the Chinese Historical Society of San Francisco.

Based on interviews with second-generation Chinese- and Korean-Americans, “this book is filled with a number of illuminating empirical findings” (American Journal of Sociology). In Becoming Asian American, Nazli Kibria draws upon extensive interviews she conducted with second-generation Chinese and Korean Americans in Boston and Los Angeles who came of age during the 1980s and 1990s to explore the dynamics of race, identity, and adaptation within these communities. Moving beyond the frameworks created to study other racial minorities and ethnic whites, she examines the various strategies used by members of this group to define themselves as both Asian and American. In her discussions on such topics as childhood, interaction with non-Asian Americans, college, work, and the problems of intermarriage and child-raising, Kibria finds wide discrepancies between the experiences of Asian Americans and those described in studies of other ethnic groups. While these differences help to explain the unusually successful degree of social integration and acceptance into mainstream American society enjoyed by this “model minority,” it is an achievement that Kibria’s interviewees admit they can never take for granted. Instead, they report that maintaining this acceptance requires constant effort on their part. Kibria suggests further developments may resolve this situation—especially the emergence of a new kind of pan–Asian American identity that would complement the Chinese or Korean American identity rather than replace it.

This volume evaluates the dual roles of war and modernity in the transformation of twentieth-century Chinese identity. The contributors, all leading researchers, argue that war, no less than revolution, deserves attention as a major force in the making of twentieth-century Chinese history. Further, they show that modernity in material culture and changes in intellectual consciousness should serve as twin foci of a new wave of scholarly analysis. Examining in particular the rise of modern Chinese cities and the making of the Chinese nation-state, the contributors to this interdisciplinary volume of cultural history provide new ways of thinking about China's modern transformation up to the 1950s. Taken together, the essays demonstrate that the combined effect of a modernizing state and an industrializing economy weakened the Chinese bourgeoisie and undercut the individual's quest for autonomy. Drawing upon new archival sources, these theoretically informed, thoroughly revisionist essays focus on topics such as Western-inspired modernity, urban cosmopolitanism, consumer culture, gender relationships, interchanges between city and countryside, and the growing impact of the state on the lives of individuals. The volume makes an important contribution toward a postsocialist understanding of twentieth-century China.

The epic first novel in a sweeping series following the romantic lives and intrigues of the fictionalized descendants of a Chinese empress—now in paperback! Behind every great family lies a great secret. There’s one rule in Gemma Huang’s family: Never, under any circumstances, set foot in Beijing. But when Gemma, an aspiring actress, lands her first break—a lead role in an update of M. Butterfly, which just so happens to be filming in the Chinese capital—Gemma heads to LAX without looking back. It’s an amazing opportunity for her burgeoning career, and she’ll get to work with her idol. Of course, there’s also the chance of discovering just exactly why she’s been forbidden from entering the city in the first place. When Gemma arrives in Beijing, she’s instantly mobbed by paparazzi at the airport. She quickly realizes she may as well be the twin of Alyssa Chua, one of the most notorious young socialites in Beijing. Thus kicks off a season of revelations and romance in which Gemma uncovers a legacy her parents have spent their lives protecting her from—one her mother would conceal at any cost.

Chinese in America endured abuse and discrimination in the late nineteenth century, but they had a leader and a fighter in Wong Chin Foo (1847–1898), whose story is a forgotten chapter in the struggle for equal rights in America. The first to use the term “Chinese American,” Wong defended his compatriots against malicious scapegoating and urged them to become Americanized to win their rights. A trailblazer and a born showman who proclaimed himself China’s first Confucian missionary to the United States, he founded America’s first association of Chinese voters and testified before Congress to get laws that denied them citizenship repealed. Wong challenged Americans to live up to the principles they freely espoused but failed to apply to the Chinese in their midst. This evocative biography is the first book-length account of the life and times of one of America’s most famous Chinese—and one of its earliest campaigners for racial equality.

A quintessiantially American story chronicling Chinese American achievement in the face of institutionalized racism by the New York Times bestselling author of The Rape of Nanking In an epic story that spans 150 years and continues to the present day, Iris Chang tells of a people’s search for a better life—the determination of the Chinese to forge an identity and a destiny in a strange land and, often against great obstacles, to find success. She chronicles the many accomplishments in America of Chinese immigrants and their descendents: building the infrastructure of their adopted country, fighting racist and exclusionary laws and anti-Asian violence, contributing to major scientific and technological advances, expanding the literary canon, and influencing the way we think about racial and ethnic groups. Interweaving political, social, economic, and cultural history, as well as the stories of individuals, Chang offers a bracing view not only of what it means to be Chinese American, but also of what it is to be American.