American Chinatown

"A wonderfully revealing and compassionate trip into the real lives of men and women who straddle the world’s two great powers” (The New Yorker) this inside look at the Chinatowns in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Honolulu, and Las Vegas “captures the essence of each by telling the stories of its people” (Contra Costa Times). Where in America can you visit another country without needing a passport? Chinatown, USA: a world within a world and a state of mind. In American Chinatown, acclaimed travel writer Bonnie Tsui takes an affectionate and attentive look at the neighborhood that has bewitched her since childhood, when she would eagerly await her grandfather’s return from the fortune cookie factory. By interweaving her own personal impressions with the experiences of those living in Chinatowns all across the United States today, Tsui beautifully captures its vivid stories, giving readers a deeper look into what Chinatown means to its inhabitants—and to America at large. There are beauty queens, celebrity chefs, immigrant garment workers; there are high school kids who are changing inner-city life in San Francisco, Chinese extras who played key roles in 1940s Hollywood, new arrivals who go straight to dealer school in Las Vegas hoping to find their fortunes in their own vision of "gold mountain." Tsui's investigations run everywhere, from mom-and-pop fortune-cookie factories to the mall, leaving no stone unturned. By interweaving her personal impressions with the experiences of those living in these unique communities, Tsui beautifully captures their vivid stories, giving readers a deeper look into what "Chinatown" means to its inhabitants, what each community takes on from its American home, and what their experience means to America at large. For anyone who has ever wandered through Chinatown and wondered what it was all about, and for Americans wanting to understand the changing face of their own country, American Chinatown is an all-access pass.