Search results for ""Author Haiming Liu""

Family and home are one word—jia—in the Chinese language. Family can be separated and home may be relocated, but jia remains intact. It signifies a system of mutual obligation, lasting responsibility, and cultural values. This strong yet flexible sense of kinship has enabled many Chinese immigrant families to endure long physical separation and accommodate continuities and discontinuities in the process of social mobility.Based on an analysis of over three thousand family letters and other primary sources, including recently released immigration files from the National Archives and Records Administration, Haiming Liu presents a remarkable transnational history of a Chinese family from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s. For three generations, the family lived between the two worlds. While the immigrant generation worked hard in an herbalist business and asparagus farming, the younger generation crossed back and forth between China and America, pursuing proper education, good careers, and a meaningful life during a difficult period of time for Chinese Americans. When social instability in China and hostile racial environment in America prevented the family from being rooted in either side of the Pacific, transnational family life became a focal point of their social existence. This well-documented and illustrated family history makes it clear that, for many Chinese immigrant families, migration does not mean a break from the past but the beginning of a new life that incorporates and transcends dual national boundaries. It convincingly shows how transnationalism has become a way of life for Chinese American families.

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This new collection of essays demonstrates how a politics of polarity have defined the 150-year experience of Chinese immigration in America. Volume editor Cassel relates how the well-publicized accusations of espionage against scientist Wen Ho Lee at the nuclear facility at Los Alamos can be understood as part of an ongoing systemic and institutionalized racism in American society. Chinese-Americans have been courted as "model workers" by American business, but also continue to be perceived as perpetual foreigners. The contributors offer engrossing accounts of the lives of immigrants, their tenacity, their diverse lifeways, from the arrival of the first Chinese gold miners in 1849 into the present day. The 21st century begins as a uniquely "Pacific Century" in the Americas, with an increasingly large presence of Asians in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The book will prove to be a valuable resource on the Asian immigrant experience for researchers and students in Chinese American studies, Asian American history, immigration studies, and American history. The Chinese in America is published in cooperation with the Chinese Historical Society of Greater San Diego and Baja California.

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This new collection of essays demonstrates how a politics of polarity have defined the 150-year experience of Chinese immigration in America. Volume editor Cassel relates how the well-publicized accusations of espionage against scientist Wen Ho Lee at the nuclear facility at Los Alamos can be understood as part of an ongoing systemic and institutionalized racism in American society. Chinese-Americans have been courted as 'model workers' by American business, but also continue to be perceived as perpetual foreigners. The contributors offer engrossing accounts of the lives of immigrants, their tenacity, their diverse lifeways, from the arrival of the first Chinese gold miners in 1849 into the present day. The 21st century begins as a uniquely 'Pacific Century' in the Americas, with an increasingly large presence of Asians in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The book will prove to be a valuable resource on the Asian immigrant experience for researchers and students in Chinese American studies, Asian American history, immigration studies, and American history. The Chinese in America is published in cooperation with the Chinese Historical Society of Greater San Diego and Baja California.

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