Description
Book SynopsisOn a June morning in 1870, seventy-five Chinese immigrants stepped off a train in New England. They threaded their way through a hostile mob and then their new employer lined them up and had them photographed. This work seeks to understand the social forces that brought this photograph into being, and the events it subsequently spawned.
Trade Review"Generously illustrated with many extraordinary photographs, A Shoemaker's Story brings 1870s America to vivid life. Combining painstaking research with world-class storytelling, Lee illuminates an important episode in the social history of the United States, and reveals the extent to which photographs can be sites of intense historical struggle."--Spartacus Educational "Although some historians might be put off by Lee's narrative style, it is a useful and informative method to access the complexity of American industrialization and especially to bring the voices of those who are often silent in the past to the forefront. Furthermore, for historians who are looking for model scholarship that uses photographs as more than illustrations, this book is a welcome and much-needed resource."--Krystyn R. Moon, American Historical Review "The rewards are everywhere present in Lee's research--and the pleasure of his writing. As a historian, Lee combines the local detail with the large issues, all the while turning elegant phrases and marshalling his account into a page-turning story that asserts, after all, 'what the author saw.'"--Ellen Wiley Tod, College Art Association "Innovative and ambitious, A Shoemaker's Story is a lucid and detailed account that is sophisticated in its methodology. Given the wide-ranging subject matter, Lee has produced a remarkably disciplined text, presenting the reader with a distinctive narrative tone that is mature, confident, and occasionally playful."--James Opp, Labour-Le Travail "Lee's lively and accessible account of their story is a must read for students and scholars of immigration and labor history."--Evelyn Sterne, Journal of American Ethnic History "A Shoemaker's Story will justifiably find a place in the historiography of photography, immigration, the visual culture of diaspora, and nineteenth-century industrialization. It is a model of research design, engaging narrative prose, and close attention to the specificity of form... Telling a new story in old-fashioned ways, [Lee] has crafted an exquisite piece of scholarship whose very title suggests the traditional detective work essential to both good history and compelling prose."--Elspeth H. Brown, CAA Reviews "A Shoemaker's Story gives us a history of these events, offering an instructive and vividly written case study into the development of industry and unions, the deskilling of labor, the growth of immigration, and the transformation of identities that characterized post Civil War America."--Mike Rabourn, Historical Journal of Massachusetts
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 Chapter One: What the Shoe Manufacturer Saw 12 Chapter Two: What the Photographers Saw 74 Chapter Three: What the Crispins Saw 144 Chapter Four: What the Chinese Saw 197 Postscript 264 Acknowledgments 273 Notes 277 Index 299
