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Book Review
Canada and the United States
| Marie Rose Wong. Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: The Chinatowns of Portland, Oregon. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 2004. Pp. xx, 337. $24.95.
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| Steeped in primary source research, Marie Rose Wong's book traces the convoluted evolution of the second largest concentration of Chinese Americans in the United States. The fact that this community, based in Portland, Oregon, through 1930, remains so little known underscores scholarly biases toward the largely unique history of San Francisco's Chinatown. Wong's detailed account of Portland is invaluable for the comparative insights it offers into the better known Chinatowns of California and New York. |
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Through local newspapers, documents in Seattle's branch of the National Archives, and municipal and state records, Wong recovers a chapter of Chinese-American history that differs markedly from those of neighboring California and Washington. Her training as a spatial demographer produces Wong's major conceptual contribution in the argument that Portland's early lack of a ghetto or enclave concentration of Chinese stemmed from relatively low levels of discrimination. Unlike San Francisco or Seattle, where anti-Chinese sentiments became institutionalized in the form of land ordinances and restrictions, Portland's leading citizens refrained from legalizing their prejudices, although also concerned about the spread of Chinese. Their restraint permitted a relatively dispersed settlement of Chinese as graphed in fifteen maps. |
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