The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America

If you have never read anything on American Chinese history and racial persecution in the latter half of the nineteenth century, then you might find this interesting and rate it highly. But if you knew what was previously written, like TEN YEARS prior, you may be disappointed like me.This work reads like a high school term paper. Especially some of my "early" works, around the ninth or tenth grade, where practically every paragraph was lifted from somewhere else, and just an intro sentence at the beginning and an ending sentence was added for good measure (beef).FIRST read Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans by Jean Pfaelzer (2007!!!)Then make your own judgement. I am only on page 40 and bored stiff. Feels totally plagiarized, if not for the footnotes. Who knows, maybe Jean Pfaelzer did it too. ButT, she did it first. Now here's a copy copy.Reminds me of college textbooks. You think the professor was the original author. Then you find out later that he built everything he wrote on previous books out of print -- probably his own textbook while he was in school. Even worse, some just take their own school years textbook and place their name on it, likely without proper permission. What is this world coming to? Even literature is not authentic. Sad.And boring; if you somehow feel like you've read all this before. Don't even want to finish reading.

This book recounts with vivid details and analytical rigor the origin and lasting impacts of the Chinese Exclusion Act on Chinese communities and migrants in the U.S. Brilliant in its conception, sweeping in its scope, eclectic in its data sources, precise in its tone, and humane in its vision, it is one of the most well-researched books on this ugly chapter of U.S. history. It argues convincingly that the racial violence against Chinese Americans and the subsequent large-scale expulsion of Chinese migrants left behind a legacy of exclusion that tore apart families and communities. It is timely in light of the mass deportations of Latinos today and there are many historical lessons here. The book also excels in its creative use of spatial mapping to document historical trends. A major achievement for a first book from this emerging scholarly voice in Asian American history!

My great grandfather somehow ended up in San Francisco as a boot maker in the 1870's. That is all I know about him. My grandfather lived most of his life in San Francisco's Chinatown, among other things he loved college football and horse racing. They lived through the worst periods documented in Lew-Williams excellent book. I was born in a California chinatown and really did not make contact with white students until high school. I read this book as a history of what I already knew, echoing what my graduate school advisor recommended I do: "Go back to your own people." Yes, The Chinese Must Go. But like the Jew and Israel, there is now a place to go.

One of the best written history books I've read in recent memory. The author took a complicated and difficult period of history and portrayed it with the breadth and clarity it deserves. Specifically: Lew-Williams presents pivotal moments from the vantage point of each party involved. Furthermore, she backs up each perspective with a depth of written, verbal, and statistical accounts. And then she carries it forward by presenting how each story, stat, and incident laddered up into the broader trends at each point in time.I really appreciated her work here and I look forward to the next book that she puts forward!

Lew-Williams writes clearly, effectively and speaks in the same way in her videos. She presents information very professionally.But how interesting is it really to read an entire book on white mobs intimidating Chinese workers in the American west? Only moderately so...