Five essential books on Chinese American history

Beth Lew-Williams is Professor of History and Director of the Program in Asian American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America.

Her latest book is John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law.

At Lit Hub Lew-Williams suggest five books if "you want to know more about the history of Chinese Americans, Asian Americans, and the discriminatory laws their presence inspired." One title on the list:

Erika Lee, The Making of Asian America: A History

For a primer on Asian American history, I’d start with Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America. It is a difficult task to trace each strand of America’s diverse Asian community and braid them together into a single volume. But Lee has done it. She recounts generations of immigrants—from Filipino sailors to Chinese gold miners, Japanese farmers, and Vietnamese refugees—and the prejudice they encountered in the United States. For the younger reader, Lee has published Made in Asian America, which offers an introduction appropriate for the middle grades. Young readers will find stories of survival and resistance, as well as hard truths about America’s history of discrimination.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue