Being Chinese, becoming Chinese American
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Being Chinese, becoming Chinese American
(The Asian American experience)
University of Illinois Press, c2002
- : cloth
- : [pbk.]
Related Bibliography 1 items
Available at 3 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
-
Doshisha University Library (Imadegawa)
: cloth361.42||C9569047701551,
: [pbk.]361.42||C9569147101496
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-227) and index
HTTP:URL=http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy032/2001005762.html Information=Table of contents
Contents of Works
- A search for a modern China and challenges to traditional Chinise identity, 1911
- Defending Chinese republicanism and debating Chineseness in the United States, 1912-14
- Constructing a Chinese American identity, 1915
- An ideological foundation of the Chinese American identity, 1916-24
- Building permanent Chinese American communities and displaying American Chinatown culture, 1920-27
- Appendix: political events in china, 1898-1924
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In this foundational study, Shehong Chen investigates how Chinese immigrants to the United States transformed themselves into Chinese Americans during the crucial period between 1911 and 1927. As the search for a modern China climaxed in the 1911 revolution in China, debates over reform and revolution politicized and divided Chinese communities in the United States. In the early 1910s, Chinese in the United States affirmed traditional Chinese values and expressed their unique visions of a modern China, while nationalist feelings emboldened them to stand up for their right to be regarded as an integral part of U.S. society. When the new Chinese republic faced its first serious threat from Japan in 1915, the Chinese response in the United States began to reveal the limits of Chinese nationalism and the emergence of a Chinese American identity.
Chen discerns the crystallization of four essential elements of a distinct Chinese American identity in the years between 1916 and 1924: support for republicanism over the restoration of monarchy; a wish to preserve Confucianism and traditional Chinese culture, although both were under attack in China; support for Christianity, despite a strong anti-Christian movement in China; and opposition to the Nationalist party's alliance with the Soviet Union and cooperation with the Chinese Communist party. Chen derives her portrait of Chinese in the United States from three distinct daily Chinese-language newspapers: a reformist paper representing the U.S. Chinatown elite, a revolutionary paper founded by the nationalist Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen, and an assimilationist paper that advocated adapting Chinese cultural practices to life in the United States. In addition to identifying the ideological elements of the Chinese American identity, Chen documents the building of permanent Chinese American communities, or Chinatowns.
Sensitively distinguishing the essence of being Chinese in the United States from being Chinese in the People's Republic of China, Chen documents how Chinese immigrants survived exclusion and discrimination, envisioned and maintained Chineseness, and adapted to American society.
by "Nielsen BookData"