John Doe Chinaman Book Talk with Beth Lew-Williams

In this eye-opening account, author Beth Lew-Williams describes a legal architecture redolent of Jim Crow but tailored specifically to people often referred to only as “John Doe Chinaman” or “Mary Chinaman” in official records. Enforced by police and tax collectors, but also by schoolteachers, missionaries, and neighbors, these laws granted the Chinese only limited access to American society, falling far short of equality or belonging. Cementing stereotypes of Chinese residents as criminals, invaders, and predators, they regulated everything from healthcare to education, property ownership, business formation, and kinship customs. Yet in the face of these limitations, Chinese communities reacted resourcefully. Many fought, evaded, and manipulated these laws, finding ways to maintain their prohibited traditions, resist unfair treatment in court, and insist on their political rights.

Lew-Williams' book John Doe Chinaman is a revelatory history of the laws that conditioned the everyday lives of Chinese people in the American West—and of those who negotiated, circumvented, and resisted discrimination.

Join the discussion, Sunday, September 21 at 11AM at CHSA.

ADMISSION:

$20 general admission

$45 admission + copy of the book

This program includes lunch. A book signing will follow the discussion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Beth Lew-Williams is Professor of History and Director of the Program in Asian American Studies at Princeton University. She is the prize-winning author of The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (Harvard University Press, 2018). Lew-Williams has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. At Princeton, her teaching was recognized by the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award.

Host or Publisher Chinese Historical Society of America