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Title details for Mott Street by Ava Chin - Available

Mott Street

A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming

by Ava Chin
Ava Chin
Audiobook
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“Essential reading for understanding not just Chinese American history but American history—and the American present.” —Celeste Ng, #1 bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere
* TIME 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 * San Francisco Chronicle's Favorite Nonfiction * Kirkus Best Nonfiction of 2023 * Winner of the Chinese American Librarians Association Best Non-Fiction Book Prize * Library Journal Best Memoir and Biography of 2023 * One of Elle's Best Memoirs of 2023 (So Far) * An ALA Notable Book *
“The Angela’s Ashes for Chinese Americans.” —Miwa Messer, Poured Over podcast
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.
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.
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.
Gorgeously written, deeply researched, and tremendously resonant, Mott Street uncovers a legacy of exclusion and resilience that speaks to the American experience, past and present.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    April 25, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593671191
      • File size: 333426 KB
      • Duration: 11:34:38

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 3, 2023
      Chin (Eating Wildly) traces her ancestors’ journey from China to New York City in this stunning memoir. Raised by a single mother in 1970s Queens, Chin knew close to nothing about the father who walked out on her. Driven by a need to fill the holes in her personal narrative, she painstakingly pieced together the beats of her family’s migration, coming up against a discrepancy that distorts many families like hers—the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which forced migrants to craft new identities to get past immigration officials, scrambling the paper trail for their offspring. For Chinese Americans, Chin writes, “it is the historical record that is a fabulous fabrication.” Eventually, Chin zeroed in on a single building in New York’s Chinatown that she learned housed multiple generations from both sides of her family. She enriches her search with startling personal reflections, including the moment she burst into tears when she realized the medical examiner who supervised demeaning immigration screenings on her paternal great-grandmother was a prominent eugenicist, and one in which she wonders whether her maternal great-grandmother, a midwife, assisted in the difficult birth of her father. Deeply researched and superbly told, this sweeping saga is sure to become required reading for those seeking to understand America’s past and present. Readers will be rapt. Agent: Frances Cody, Aragi, Inc.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Listeners will be fascinated by professor and journalist Ava Chin's extensive examination of her Chinese American family's history. Chin inserts herself into the narrative, detailing her visits to archives throughout the U.S. and her ancestral home in China. In an impassioned and insistent tone, Chin investigates the prejudices and marginalization her relatives endured once they arrived in the U.S. in the nineteenth century. Chin carefully depicts male relatives who worked building this nation's railroads, a white woman who married into her family and then lost her American citizenship, and her many maternal and paternal relations who coincidentally lived in the same Mott Street apartment building in New York City. This winning history, which is both personal and expansive, is expertly told and narrated. M.J. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      June 10, 2024

      Fifth-generation Chinese American Chin (Eating Wildly) offers a sensitively drawn, self-narrated exploration of her family's remarkable history. Chin, raised by her single mother and grandparents, discovers that relatives on both sides of her family converged upon a single apartment building in Manhattan's Chinatown. Hoping to learn more, she embarks upon a deep dive into her eclectic family history, populated by politicians, railroad workers, midwives, business owners, and more. Describing these individuals, she gives free rein to her emotions, expressing tenderness for her intersex aunt, Elva Lisk; admiration for Wu Doshim, who produced a newspaper with only 7,000 pieces of Chinese movable type when 30,000 were needed; and rage when imagining her great-grandmother Cheung To Chun desperately trying to reunite with her husband amid draconian governmental restrictions. Chin is eloquent as she describes the senselessly cruel Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and points out that anti-Asian violence and discrimination continue today. VERDICT Chin's skillfully narrated account of her family and the history of Chinese Americans in the United States resonates with passion, wonder, and sorrow. An absorbing and timely work; highly recommended for any audio history collection.--Sarah Hashimoto

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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