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Book Review
| Chinese American Transnationalism: The Flow of People, Resources and Ideas between China and America during the Exclusion Era. Edited by Sucheng Chan. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006. xvi + 294 pp. Tables, notes, index. $23.95, paper.)
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This is a collection of eight essays by some of the foremost social historians of pre-war Chinese America. Except for Sucheng Chan's analysis of California census schedules, the chapters cover familiar material, often drawn from larger works by the same authors. Taken together these essays offer a concise and worthwhile introduction to the state of the field in Chinese American social history. |
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I call this work "social history" deliberately. The book does not deliver on the transnationalism promised in the title. The collection could just as accurately be titled, "Chinese American Settlers: Relocation, Adaptation and the Creation of New Identities in America." Only Madeline Hsu's essay on jinshanzhuang (Gold Mountain trading firms) and Yong Chen's chapter on Chinese American investments in China have well-developed transnational perspectives. Shehong Chen's chapter on Chinese American newspapers and Him Mark Lai's essay on Chinese American education both nod towards the relevance of political developments in China. But, like Erika Lee on the exclusion laws, Haiming Liu on Chinese herbalists, and Xiao-huang Yin on Chinese American family novels, these essays are conceived largely within a familiar nation-based framework of immigration, accommodation, and becoming American. |
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Sucheng Chan's essay on Chinese American family formation as revealed in the California census schedules of 1900 and 1910 makes up over 40 percent of the entire text. It is the only chapter based on extensive new research, but with 73 pages of appendices and tables it also disrupts the flow of the text as an introduction to Chinese American social history. Framed as a critique of the "prevailing master narrative" of transnational Chinese families, it also makes the fewest concessions to the book's supposed master narrative of transnationalism (p. 38). The details of Chan's findings on marriage patterns and the life trajectories of Chinese women in the United States are intriguing. But with no mention of polygamy or the enormous incentive for Chinese to falsely claim status as native-born American citizens, none of Chan's conclusions can be accepted as definitive. |
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Over half of the essays make excellent use of Chinese language sources, and sometimes of Chinese language secondary material. The next step in making scholarship on Chinese America as transnational as its subjects would be to follow in the footsteps of Sucheng Chan nearly two decades ago and engage with the extensive literature on Chinese migration to other parts of the world. Scholarship on Chinese in other parts of the world has gone farther in developing transnational histories and their relationship to national histories, and would also help Chinese American historians avoid many small errors about migration patterns and institutions. In return, Chinese overseas studies could learn from the innovative use of social history sources that is on display in books such as this. |
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| Adam McKeown
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| Columbia University |
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ISSN 1939-8603
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