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Mae Ngai is an award-winning author and a professor at Columbia University. In her third book, The Chinese Question, she examines the race relations and to some degree, the economic underpinnings of the Chinese diaspora.

My thanks go to NetGalley and W.W. Norton and Company for the review copy. I am disgracefully late, but when I began reading this book I realized that if I were to absorb and retain anything here, I would need to take it in small bites. That said, this is an unusually well researched work, and it’s well worth the time and attention of anyone interested in the topic.

Usually when I see research having to do with Chinese immigration, it is within the context of immigration to the United States, or an examination of the push factors of emigration, examining why Chinese chose to leave their native land and embark upon an expensive, dangerous, and uncertain journey to a place they’d never visited—in most cases—and where they usually did not speak the language. Instead, Ngai examines it as a global diaspora that includes English speaking nations, namely South Africa, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the United States. In doing so she is able to highlight the similarities of treatment, to put it politely, and also to dismantle some of the stereotypes that have rooted themselves in English speakers’ knowledge of history.

For starters, she wants us to know that Chinese immigrants were not necessarily “coolies” or indentured workers, and they didn’t always face conflicts with Caucasian powerbrokers. But there certainly were a great many blood chilling abuses, sometimes brought about by White fear of the “other,” but oftener from greed and the desire to exploit the Chinese working class and eliminate competition from the businesses of better off Chinese.

This study is adjacent to my own graduate study topic of many years ago, when I examined the “Model Minority,” and the attempt to counter the demands of U.S. Civil Rights activists of the 1950s and 1960s with the suggestion that Black people quietly accept abuse and quietly climb the economic ladder, or not, as Asians of Chinese and Japanese descent had supposedly done. Ngai demonstrates that Chinese immigrants weren’t all that quiet, and they weren’t all that accepting of maltreatment at the hands of employers and local officials. This is interesting material indeed, and I wish I had known these things sooner.

As a general read for a wide audience, this may be a four star book because it is dense and has an academic approach that not all pleasure readers will appreciate; however, for those with a strong interest in the topic, whether for academic research or personal knowledge and growth, it is hands down the best work I’ve seen in decades.

Highly recommended to those passionate about the issue.

A majority of the history of Chinese folk and their labour in North America has been focused on the Canadian experience, and Ngai's work adds an essential text to that historiography by exploring the experiences of Chinese labourers in the United States, Australia, and South Africa. This is an essential read for anyone wanting to learn more about the history of the Chinese diaspora and the ways in which western capitalism exploits and discards those who do their labour.

Mae Ngai has done important work putting the California, Australia, and South African gold rushes in a Chinese-Pacific context and a British and American Imperial context. This is not a truly Pacific history, as only slight mention is made of other Asian and Latin American groups involved in this world. That wasnt clear in the description, but takes nothing away from the work. This is about Anglo (American and British) - Chinese relations, on small and grand levels.

That said, this is eye opening for many students of US History and I plan to incorporate portions into my US history survey. I learned so much that I did not already know.

That said, the weakness here is tying the three sections together. The US and Australia works, but could be tighter. I get US and Australia for background of South Africa, but it is left there when there were many more connections to explicitly make. The debate about Chinese as enslaved and its relation to other rhetoric was not as complete as I needed it to be, and would require additional context in order to assign to students. This did make it drag a bit in the middle.

Overall, this is a great addition to scholarship in multiple fields, and if you're interested in any of the topics, you should pick it up.

Thank you to Mae Ngai, W W Norton & Company, and Netgalley for an advanced ecopy in exchange for an honest review.

"Race relations were not always conflictual, but the perception of competition gave rise to a racial politics expressed as the 'Chinese Question'. In the nineteenth century, Americans and Europeans frequently describe a thorny social problem as a 'Question''".

Mae delivered an incredibly well researched history of the Chinese experience in the gold rush. That it took only 10 years to collect, analyse and write such an informative history is a testament to her research skills. She offers insights into a specific period in time, but additionally contributes to discussions relevant today, including whether Chinese people can ever truly 'belong' in the West - a sentiment exacerbated by current affairs and debated for longer than many of us realise.

The book is worth every page and I strongly encourage persistence and reflection on the ideas.

Thank you NetGalley for the Arc in return for an honest review.