Rating: 
Summary: illuminating...but
Review: Iris Chang deserves credit for targeting such a broad subject and I found new information frequently during my reading. The prose, however, was average without much elegance. I agree with other readers that Evil White People populate this book more than is fair. The definitive account of this important topic waits to be written.
Rating: 
Summary: REMEMBERING AMERICAN HERO: IRIS CHANG
Review: Iris Chang is one of Chinese Americans Heroes. She is a symbol of truth, an advocacy of human rights, and a spokeswoman for Chinese wartime victims.
I am very sorry to hear what happened to her. I want to send my deepest condolence to her family. Nov.12, 2004.
Ming Truong, Virginia, USA.
Rating:
Summary: Political economic and cultural observations deftly blend
Review: Iris Chang provides an intriguing history of one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups in this country, telling of the many accomplishments of Chinese-American immigrants and providing stories of families and individuals from all walks of life in the process. Political economic and cultural observations deftly blend in Chinese In America, a narrative history which offers a personal look at Chinese-American culture and lives.
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed, but informative
Review: Iris Chang's "The Chinese In America: A Narrative History" may not be the first book about Chinese immigrants in America, but it is perhaps the most reader accesible. There is no doubt that Chang's prose makes the book not only easy to read, but also incredibly easy to grasp - a quality which makes it in some ways superior to the acedemic jargon that plauges most ethno-scoholarly works.
But at what point do things become over simplified? At what point is it too regressive?
Chang's thesis is a simple one - that the Chinese in America have lived in a cyclical state of love and hate. While the Chinese are admired for their hard work ethic and their entrepuenuership, they are also consistently chastised as being outsiders and have at times, become convienient scapegoats at the whims of the frustrations of the larger American public. Chang seeks to illustrate this dynamic with a variety of historical examples, from the days of the California Gold Rush to the recent Wen Ho Lee affair. Chang makes a compelling argument - there is no doubt that the Chinese in America have suffered at the hands of racial oppressors, much like other minority races and ethnicities in America. The Wen Ho Lee case, in particular, is a sobering reminder that the image of the accepted model minority is very easily retracted, especially when it comes at the conviencience of people like Rep. Chistopher Cox (R-CA), a leader among anti-Chinese conspiracy theorists.
There is no doubt of Chang's bias. Like her previous work, "The Rape of Nanking," Chang is deeply personally invested in this book. Whether or not this detracts from her credibilty as a writer is up to you. I personally found most of her analyses truthful, but her one-sidedness will inevitably turn many off.
Which leads me to my main critisism of the book - the regressivism. Chang, at times, devolves race relations in America to be "Asian vs. White," which seems to me to be too simplistic for such a complicated topic. In addition, it risks putting her readers on the defensive, a mistake when you're trying to inform others of a topic that you're passionate about. There is no doubt that Chang wants to write for everybody, but her tone narrows her audience to just those who agree with her, and risks alienating those who are on the fence. In this respect, I think she should've done better.
"The Rape of Nanking" was akin in style to this - passionate and at times angry. But the instance of that book, anger is understandable. "The Chinese In America" requires a different tone and a different outlook.
As an Asian-American with Chinese origins, I found Chang's book to be informative and sobering. I would reccomend it to those who seek an expanded history of something that's not taught in the history books. It may be flawed, but it is still worth the read.
Rating:
Summary: A lesson in there for all of us.
Review: Iris Chang, in "The Chinese in America: A Narrative History" articulates the Chinese immigrant experience and identity over historic time. According to Chang, the real push/pull began when "In 1868, China and the U.S. government signed the Burlingame Treaty. In exchange for "most favored nation" status in trade, China agreed to recognize the "inherent and inalienable right of man to change his home and allegiance and also mutual advantage of free migration and emigration of their citizens and subjects respectively from one country to the other for purposes of curiosity or trade or as permanent residents"" (Chang 57). In this narrative, she writes about how Chinese immigrants took the risk of moving to a new and alien land only to realize that they had been duped. Racist laws were enacted and played themselves out by next door neighbors who ultimately suspected then of nativist tendencies and mixed loyalties. In the 150-year historic timeline that Chang writes about, we begin with the realities in Qing dynasty China and a government that nearly bankrupted the nation prompting the Chinese to desperately seek refuge in what they called "Gam Saan." According to Chang, the Chinese immigration falls into three waves: those who came here to be laborers during the days of the California gold rush and the building of the transcontinental railroad, those who came to escape the 1949 communist takeover, and those who came in the 1980s and 1990s as relations between China and the U.S. improved. Over 100,000 Chinese came to work as placer miners during the California rush of 1849. This first rush ended in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act when "[Horace] Page's bill passed both houses of Congress. This time, President Arthur, doubtless fully sensitive to the response after his previous veto, did not oppose it. On May 6, 1882, he signed into law the Chinese Exclusion Act. Thus was enacted, as one scholar has put it, "one of the most infamous and tragic statues in American history," one that would "frame the immigration debate in the years that followed and [result in] greater and greater restrictions on foreigners seeking refuge and freedom in the United States"' (Chang 132). Along the same lines, according to Chang, the Chinese have forever been marked, stereotyped, and attacked but also that the signifier shifts. Chang also explores the current triple-bind that is the American-born Chinese or the "ABC" experience: to excel, to become white, and to embrace their ethnic heritage, in all this time dealing with a dominant white majority that shifts the signifier that is the Chinese American. Chang writes "Almost overnight, the attack on Pearl Harbor transformed the American image of China and Japan - and redistributed stereotypes for both Chinese and Japanese Americans. [...] Some Chinese Americans saw a silver lining in this shift of racial antipathy and used the newly favorable Chinese image to bring about the repeal of the exclusion laws. After Pearl Harbor, several influential Americans, both ethnic Chinese and Caucasian, lobbied to overturn the ban on Chinese immigration that had been enacted back in 1882 (Chang 222-5). Like all books that are based on oral histories the individual story is taken to be representative of a much larger story. In this light, the book is no different from Jung Chang's "Wild Swans." In her defense, I found that the story of the Qing destruction and the internal turmoil that constantly plagues China, which serves as a push factor to move, which Chang stretches over 150 years, to be very useful to get a sense of the scale of the suffering in China. Unlike Ronald Takaki, Chang drops the ball and leaves out the development of the Chinese immigrant in key locations like Hawaii - which was really seminal in the entire migration process. Chang also explores the anti-Chinese hysteria, starting with the race riots in Cleveland during the placer mining era all the way to the espionage witchhunt of the 1990s all really helpful in getting a sense of the Chinese American experience. Chang spends a considerable time on the case of Wen Ho Lee, the Chinese American researcher who worked at Los Alamos. Lee was accused of passing nuclear technology information to Chinese government on inconclusive evidence. Chang suggests that perhaps education and a greater sense of the voice will help to alleviate racism - perhaps there is a lesson in there for all of us. Miguel Llora
Rating:
Summary: A good read; A few facts omitted.
Review: The book was a very engaging and light read. In books like this that are wrought with detail and names, it is difficult to know which things are selectively presented to advance the author's case. Some examples of things that the author doesn't quite tell right:
1. Chinese people live in a lot of countries and are very unpopular there. The things that make them disliked (i.e., inherent dishonesty, cloying hubris) may not all be on the part of the host country. The author admits as much when she talks in the earlier pages of the book about Chinese people having much experience avoiding laws and government regulations. So, for example, after the 9/11 attacks on the USA most of the immigration tightening had an effect on Chinese people, who are also the vast majority of those who commit immigration evasion. Chang would call this "institutionalized discrimination" or discrimination of some sort, when in fact it just so happens that there are more Chinese people breaking those particular laws at any given time.
2. Most of the problems between Chinese and Westerners were actually a matter of *Labor Conflict.* It is a brutal thing in many places. This was not unique to the USA. This could have been explained a bit more clearly.
3. Chinese people very often go to other countries and try to extend China into them. (Malaysia, Canada, etc.) This was not addressed by Chang at all. (Note that she mentioned that most Chinese who enrolled in the Army did so because they thought they were defending China against Japan and not the USA after the Pearl Harbor attack.) Host countries are not receptive to what they percieve as "ungrateful outsiders." Not least are the Han Chinese in China itself, who are more brutal to ethnic minorities in their quest to turn them into Chinese people than the US government ever was trying to turn Chinese people into Americans. So now what? It's acceptable (not mentioned) when Han Chinese do it, but terrible when Whites (whoever they are) do?
4. The Wen Ho Lee case, as Chang described it, could have been seen as "persecution," but much evidence came up later of Chinese double agents. Not to mention the fact that a large number of people working in sensitive defense industries may be recent Chinese immigrants and therefore subject to closer scrutiny. (There was recently an affair between two people, one American and the other Chinese. The Chinese partner--a woman--passed sensitive information to the Chinese government.) Frequently, Chang would have us believe that it was undeserved, or that the government acted without provocation. But it just so happens that there are a large number of laws which Chinese are likely to violate disproportionately and will therefore be on the unpleasant side of law enforcement.
On the good side:
1. The statistical research was fairly tight. When she talked about higher household incomes, she addressed the hidden variable of higher workforce participation. This is something that people don't talk about much when pointing out higher Asian income.
2. Chang makes a good, clear distinction between the different types of Chinese people that have come to the US at various periods. We can at least understand that they are not all the same. One good example is the differing perceptions of the different groups toward black people. So, the earlier arrivals wanted nothing to do with them. Later, more progressive groups saw them as allies against the establishment.
3. The book's explanation of the self-selection of the immigrants is a strong point. Most of the people who fled China were fleeing something even worse than what they went to. And the author is not shy about dealing with the morass that was created in Greater China as a push factor into the US. (Given the Chinese tendency toward chauvinism, it's amazing that Chang was willing to admit even this much.)
Rating: 
Summary: journalistic superficiality
Review: The initial portion of the book is a lucid and well organized account of Chinese-American history. The latter half of the book, falters into a jargonistic series of feature stories, which are interesting anecdote, but fail to make any real point. While Ms. Chang is specific in referring to Chinese immigrants by time and place (e.g. "ABC" American born chinese), she uses gross and undefined terms for everyone else (e.g. "Caucasians", "whites" "white culture"). The term "Caucasian" is as meaningless and offensive as the terms "Oriental" Ms. Chang fails to mention that the same opprobrium reserved for the Chinese, was also brought to bear on the Irish and other "white" groups. It is too simplistic to look at "whites" v. "Chinese" as a paradigm for a study of ethnic assimilation. As a journalist, lacking historical acumen or training, Ms. Chang ultimately has little to add.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: The most important chronicle on Chinese Americans written to date. Iris did an amazing job presenting the vast amount of information in a concise manner. Her book offers great insight on the values and traditions of our people. Bill Lee, author, "Chinese Playground"
Rating:
Summary: Iris Chang did it again!
Review: The title speaks for itself. This is a book that narrates the role the Chinese play in the United States of America, beginning from the late 19th century, when the first wave of Chinese arrived at San Francisco from China after hearing stories that gold nuggets could be easily picked up along the streets of America. Driven by the dream to become wealthy yet often hindered by racist inclinations inherent in the white community and volatility in the global political climate, the Chinese led a life of ups and downs. The book is essentially about the history of America in the 20th century told from the perspective of the Chinese Americans. It also relates to the history of modern China (such as the China under Mao rule) and the history of the world (such as the Cold War, Great Depression), as these closely affect the lives of the Chinese living in America. Wide in its scope, interdisciplinary in its coverage yet incisive in its focus, "The Chinese in America" promises to be an engaging read.
One of the reasons why this book is so close to heart is that as a Chinese Singaporean reading the book, I can draw numerous parallels between the Chinese Americans and Chinese Singaporeans. The Chinese, who are not `natives of the soil', play a pivotal role in the development of the country in both regions. Their ancestors were immigrants from China, who ventured into unknown ground in search for better lives. The most obvious of the similarities is the struggle to find an identity in a Westernized society. Whether to disregard our ethnic roots and embrace fully the influences of the West is a question that till now, remains unresolved.
Iris uses a consistently objective tone throughout the book, presenting facts without distortion. Incorporating vivid accounts and quotable quotes from famous personalities, and a lucid writing style, Iris makes the contents of the book less intimidating. One star off the total as I would personally prefer if Iris could include more of her own opinions and insights into the subject at the end of the book, giving a splendid finishing touch to it.
Rating: 
Summary: Terribly biased
Review: This book portrays a skewed and somewhat racist view of history. I.E. it focusses on the "white" vs. "chinese". Moreover, at the time of this writing, all of the good reviews come from Chinese people. Take that as a clue.
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