Collection of memories, stories and anecdotes from Baby Boomer American Born Chinese (ABC) about their formative years in the title neighborhood

Chinese American baby boomers who grew up within the twenty-nine square blocks of San Francisco's Chinatown lived in two worlds. Elders implored the younger generation to retain ties with old China even as the youth felt the pull of a future sheathed in red, white and blue. The family-owned shops, favorite siu-yeh (snack) joints and the gai-chongs where mothers labored as low-wage seamstresses contrasted with the allure of Disney, new cars and football. It was a childhood immersed in two vibrant cultures and languages, shaped by both. Author Edmund S. Wong brings to life Chinatown's heart and soul from its golden age.

Chinese American baby boomers who grew up within the twenty-nine square blocks of San Francisco's Chinatown lived in two worlds. Elders implored the younger generation to retain ties with old China even as the youth felt the pull of a future sheathed in red, white and blue. The family-owned shops, favorite siu-yeh (snack) joints and the gai-chongs where mothers labored as low-wage seamstresses contrasted with the allure of Disney, new cars and football. It was a childhood immersed in two vibrant cultures and languages, shaped by both. Author Edmund S. Wong brings to life Chinatown's heart and soul from its golden age.

Revealing the untold stories of a pioneer generation of young Chinese Americans, this book places the children and families of early Chinatown in the middle of efforts to combat American policies of exclusion and segregation. Wendy Jorae challenges long-held notions of early Chinatown as a bachelor community by showing that families--and particularly children--played important roles in its daily life. She explores the wide-ranging images of Chinatown's youth created by competing interests with their own agendas--from anti-immigrant depictions of Chinese children as filthy and culturally inferior to exotic and Orientalized images that catered to the tourist's ideal of Chinatown. All of these representations, Jorae notes, tended to further isolate Chinatown at a time when American-born Chinese children were attempting to define themselves as Chinese American. Facing barriers of immigration exclusion, cultural dislocation, child labor, segregated schooling, crime, and violence, Chinese American children attempted to build a world for themselves on the margins of two cultures. Their story is part of the larger American story of the struggle to overcome racism and realize the ideal of equality.

From football games at Kezar Stadium to a perfectly broiled Zim burger, San Franciscans have fond memories of the decades after World War II. Dressing up for a movie at the Fox Theatre on Market Street, catching the train at the old S.P. Station on Third and Townsend, taking the streetcar downtown to see magnificent displays in the Emporium's windows or spending a day at Golden Gate Park, the outside lands of San Francisco were teeming with youngsters and the young-at-heart alike. Western Neighborhoods Project columnist and San Francisco native Frank Dunnigan offers a charming collection of nostalgic vignettes about the thriving Western communities of unforgettable people and places that defined generations.

Newcomers and visitors can still enjoy iconic San Francisco with activities like riding a cable car or taking in the view from Twin Peaks. But San Franciscans cherish memories of a place quite different. They reminisce about seafood dinners at A. Sabella's on Fisherman's Wharf, the enormous Christmas tree in Union Square's City of Paris department store and taking a handful of dimes to Playland-at-the-Beach for arcade games and cotton candy. In his second volume of these unforgettable stories, local author and historian Frank Dunnigan vividly recalls the many details that made life special in the City by the Bay for generations.

This book presents a much-needed discussion on ethnic identification and morphosyntactic variation in San Francisco Chinatown—a community that has received very little attention in linguistic research. An investigation of original, interactive speech data sheds light on how first- and second-generation Chinese Americans signal (ethnic) identity through morphosyntactic variation in English and on how they co-construct identity discursively. After an introduction to the community’s history, the book provides background information on ethnic varieties in North America. This discussion grounds the present book within existing research and illustrates how studies on ethnic varieties of English have evolved. The book then proceeds with a description of quantitative and qualitative results on linguistic variation and ethnic identity. These analyses show how linguistic variation is only one way of signalling belonging to a community and highlight that Chinese Americans draw on a variety of sources, most notably the heritage language, to construct and negotiate (ethnic) identity. This book will be of particular interest to linguists - particularly academics working in sociolinguistics, language and identity, and language variation - but also to scholars interested in related issues such as migration, discrimination, and ethnicity.