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2024 Better Together Tour Additional Reading

Similarities Between the Chinese American and Black American Experience
Frederick Douglass’s Composite Nation

Once Black slaves were officially free, Frederick Douglass turned his vision to a Utopian version of America that would see all people as free and equal. He outlined his ideas in his famous “Composite Nation” speech which he delivered across several cities in the Northeast and Midwest in 1969.

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Chinese Americans and Black Americans and Segregation

There is a lengthy history of segregation and discrimination shared by both Chinese and Black Americans, especially in the American South.

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Civil Rights Activist Grace Lee Boggs

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Additional reading on the interplay between Chinese and Black Americans

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Major Migration Events from China to America

The Chinese Exclusion Act

The Chinese Exclusion Act, signed into law in 1882, was the only US law specifically banning immigrants on the basis of their race. It was passed in the wake over other laws, mainly at the state level in California, to block the perceived influx of Chinese laborers and their culture, a common trope of the “Yellow Peril” rhetoric of the time. The act in its entirety wasn’t repealed in full until the Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act, aka the Magnuson Act, in 1943.

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The 1970s Shifts in Cino-American Cooperation

In 1972, President Richard Nixon visited China, calling the trip the “week that changed the world.” On the final day of the trip, Nixon and Chinese Premier Chou Enlai released what would become known as the Shanghai Communiqué, a document that essentially established peaceful relations between the United States and The People’s Republic of China. Although the true importance of Nixon’s trip is now hotly debated, symbolically it was a watershed moment that signaled dramatic changes in the US’s relationship with China and its people.

 

However, it wasn’t until January 1, 1979, when the US and the PRC released the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations, that an official relationship between the countries existed. One month before the Communiqué, the US ended its official recognition of the Republic of China, now Taiwan, and four months after the Communiqué the US Congress passed the Taiwanese Relations Act. Regarding immigration, these three events officially identified Chinese and Taiwanese as two distinctly different peoples, meaning each were given 20,000 quota spots instead of 20,000 combined.

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  • “Joint Statement Following Discussions With Leaders of the People’s Republic of China.” (aka: Shanghai Communiqué.) Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XVII, China, 1969–1972 Document 203. Office of the Historian, US Department of State. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v17/d203

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  • “Address by President Carter to the Nation.” (aka: the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations.) Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume I, Foundations of Foreign Policy, Document 104. Office of the Historian, US Department of State. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v01/d104

 

American Civil Rights and its Relationship with Communist China

During the Cold War, communist countries found kinship with Black Americans and often used civil rights issues as a propaganda tool. Chairman Mao Zedong in specific was very vocal about the plight of Black Americans.

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Additional reading on Chinese immigrants in the US

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Ronald Reagan and the Model Minority Myth

The “Model Minority” concept originated in the US around the time of World War II. Essentially, the belief was that since Chinese Americans (more broadly Asian Americans) often came with higher levels of education and work experience, they integrated into US (white) society more easily. It was often put forth as an argument during the Civil Rights Movement, with the belief that if other minority groups could move beyond discrimination and barriers to succeed, why couldn’t Black Americans?

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The Myth has been widely criticized for its gross generalizations and inaccuracies, not only slighting the realities other minority groups but also ignoring more marginalized Asian groups.

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Books
Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming

By: Ava Chin

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As the only child of a single mother in Queens, Ava Chin found her family’s origins to be shrouded in mystery. She had never met her father, and her grandparents’ stories didn’t match the history she read at school. Mott Street traces Chin’s quest to understand her Chinese American family’s story. Over decades of painstaking research, she finds not only her father but also the building that provided a refuge for them all.

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Breaking the silence surrounding her family’s past meant confronting the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—the first federal law to restrict immigration by race and nationality, barring Chinese immigrants from citizenship for six decades. Chin traces the story of the pioneering family members who emigrated from the Pearl River Delta, crossing an ocean to make their way in the American West of the mid-nineteenth century. She tells of their backbreaking work on the transcontinental railroad and of the brutal racism of frontier towns, then follows their paths to New York City.

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In New York’s Chinatown she discovers a single building on Mott Street where so many of her ancestors would live, begin families, and craft new identities. She follows the men and women who became merchants, “paper son” refugees, activists, and heads of the Chinese tong, piecing together how they bore and resisted the weight of the Exclusion laws. She soon realizes that exclusion is not simply a political condition but also a personal one.

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Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life

By: Alice Wong

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In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its confidence, passion, ambition, and ferocity. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong.

 

Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, and more, Alice uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer. From her love of food and pop culture to her unwavering commitment to dismantling systemic ableism, Alice shares her thoughts on creativity, access, power, care, the pandemic, mortality, and the future. As a self-described disabled oracle, Alice traces her origins, tells her story, and creates a space for disabled people to be in conversation with one another and the world. Filled with incisive wit, joy, and rage, Wong’s Year of the Tiger will galvanize readers with big cat energy.

 

The Chinese in America: A Narrative History

By: Iris Chang

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In an epic story that spans 150 years and continues to the present day, Iris Chang tells of a people’s search for a better life—the determination of the Chinese to forge an identity and a destiny in a strange land and, often against great obstacles, to find success. She chronicles the many accomplishments in America of Chinese immigrants and their descendents: building the infrastructure of their adopted country, fighting racist and exclusionary laws and anti-Asian violence, contributing to major scientific and technological advances, expanding the literary canon, and influencing the way we think about racial and ethnic groups. Interweaving political, social, economic, and cultural history, as well as the stories of individuals, Chang offers a bracing view not only of what it means to be Chinese American, but also of what it is to be American.

 

Yellowface: A Novel

By: R.F. Kuang

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Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

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So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

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But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

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With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently enjoyable.

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