The Children Of Chinatown: Growing Up Chinese American In San Francisco, 1850-1920 Project Muse Upcc Books

Revealing the untold stories of a pioneer generation of young Chinese Americans, this book places the children and families of early Chinatown in the middle of efforts to combat American policies of exclusion and segregation. Wendy Jorae challenges long-held notions of early Chinatown as a bachelor community by showing that families—and particularly children—played important roles in its daily life. She explores the wide-ranging images of Chinatown's youth created by competing interests with their own agendas—from anti-immigrant depictions of Chinese children as filthy and culturally inferior to exotic and Orientalized images that catered to the tourist's ideal of Chinatown. All of these representations, Jorae notes, tended to further isolate Chinatown at a time when American-born Chinese children were attempting to define themselves as Chinese American. Facing barriers of immigration exclusion, cultural dislocation, child labor, segregated schooling, crime, and violence, Chinese American children attempted to build a world for themselves on the margins of two cultures. Their story is part of the larger American story of the struggle to overcome racism and realize the ideal of equality. Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 12 INTRODUCTION: Constructing Childhood in Early Chinatown: Image versus Reality......Page 18 CHAPTER 1: The Immigration of Chinese Children and the Chinese Question......Page 26 CHAPTER 2: Recentering the Chinese Family in Early Chinese American History......Page 59 CHAPTER 3: For the Family Back Home: Chinese Children at Work......Page 95 CHAPTER 4: Challenging Segregation: Chinese Children at School......Page 127 CHAPTER 5: Articles of Contention: Chinese Children in the Missions and Courts......Page 157 CHAPTER 6: Children of the New Chinatown......Page 193 CONCLUSION: Constructing the Future......Page 232 Notes......Page 248 Bibliography......Page 282 B......Page 302 C......Page 303 F......Page 305 G......Page 306 L......Page 307 M......Page 308 P......Page 309 S......Page 310 W......Page 311 Y......Page 312