Surviving on the Gold Mountain is the first comprehensive work on Chinese American women's history covering the past 150 years. Relying on archival documents (many of which have never been used), oral history interviews, census data, contemporary newspapers in English and Chinese, and secondary literature, it unearths an unknown page of Chinese American history--the lives of Chinese immigrant women as wives of merchants, farmers, and laborers, as prostitutes, and as students and professionals in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America.

Chinese St. Louis offers the first empirical study of a Midwestern Chinese American community from its nineteenth-century origins to the present. As in many cities, Chinese newcomers were soon segregated in an enclave; in St. Louis the enclave was called Hop Alley. Huping Ling shows how, over time, the community grew and dispersed until it was no longer marked by physical boundaries. She argues that the St. Louis experience departs from the standard models of Chinese settlement in urban areas, which are based on studies of coastal cities. Developing the concept of a cultural community, Ling...

Chinese St. Louis offers the first empirical study of a Midwestern Chinese American community from its nineteenth-century origins to the present. As in many cities, Chinese newcomers were soon segregated in an enclave; in St. Louis the enclave was called Hop Alley. Huping Ling shows how, over time, the community grew and dispersed until it was no longer marked by physical boundaries. She argues that the St. Louis experience departs from the standard models of Chinese settlement in urban areas, which are based on studies of coastal cities. Developing the concept of a cultural community, Ling...