Her entry begins:I enjoy reading non-fiction history books because truth truly is stranger than fiction. One of the most interesting books I have read in the last few years is Mary Ting Yi Lui’s The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City. Lui’s book unfolds like a mystery novel as she details the murder of Elsie Sigel, a white middle-class missionary woman working in New York’s early twentieth century Chinatown. What is most compelling is Lui’s analysis of...[read on]Read more about The Children of Chinatown.
Among the early praise for the book: "Jorae's efforts to reconstruct children's lived experiences in multiple arenas add an important dimension to the study of the Chinese in San Francisco."Writers Read: Wendy Rouse Jorae.
--Colleen Fong, California State University, East Bay
"Jorae breaks new ground in Chinese American history with her sustained analysis of children and family life among Chinese immigrants during the exclusion period. Addressing four overlapping parties who each had a stake in using the children of Chinatown for their own agenda, she constructs her analysis with sophistication and solid evidence."
--K. Scott Wong, Williams College
--Marshal Zeringue
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