Book Talk: "Performing Chinatown" with author William Gow

In Performing Chinatown, historian William Gow argues that Chinese Americans in Los Angeles used these performances in Hollywood films and in Chinatown for tourists to shape widely held understandings of race and national belonging during this pivotal chapter in U.S. history.

Performing Chinatown conceives of these racial representations as intimately connected to the restrictive immigration laws that limited Chinese entry into the U.S. beginning with the 1875 Page Act and continuing until the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. At the heart of this argument are the voices of everyday people including Chinese American movie extras, street performers, and merchants. Drawing on more than 40 oral history interviews as well as research in more than a dozen archival and family collections, this book retells the long-overlooked history of the ways that Los Angeles Chinatown shaped Hollywood and how Hollywood, in turn, shaped perceptions of Asian American identity.

NOTE:
Bring your copy of Performing Chinatown for Professor Gow to sign after the talk. Please note that you must order your book in advance as books will not be sold at the event. Use discount code GOW20 to receive 20% off when purchasing directly from Stanford University Press. The book is also available through bookshop.org and all other major online book retailers.

About the author:

Will Gow is a Sacramento-based community historian, educator, and documentary filmmaker. A fourth generation Chinese American and a proud graduate of the San Francisco Unified School District, he holds an M.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. Before receiving his doctorate, he taught history for nearly a decade in California public schools. He is also a long-time volunteer with the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California (CHSSC), a non-profit devoted to documenting the history of Chinese Americans in Southern California. At the CHSSC, he is the co-director of the Five Chinatowns project, documenting the history of the various Chinatowns that existed in Los Angeles between 1875 and 1965. His book, Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community is available from Stanford University Press. He currently works at CSU Sacramento where he is an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies in the Ethnic Studies Department.

Host or Publisher Chinese Historical Society of America