Author：Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler

Publisher：Oxford University Press

Publishing Year：1994

Call Number：E184.C5H776

Introduction：Turn the pages of your family scrap book or picture album and faces and memories leap out at you. Even if you never knew or don’t remember some of your relatives, the snapshots and keepsakes make them familiar, and the old family stories never fail to bring a laugh and a warm memory. Now turn through the albums of other families——many other families——and see their grandfathers’ and great-grand -mothers’ faces and read their stories. Why did they leave the old country? How did they got here? Why did they live the way they did? What did other people think about them? How did they get along? The family album holds some of the answers.

The Chinese American Family Album is a scrapbook of family letters and diary entries, official documents, newspaper articles, and excerpts from literature of the past and present——a personal remembrance of an extended family of Chinese immigrants and their descendants. As we read, we begin to know this family almost as well as our own. The letters written by the new immigrants to the folks left behind in China allow us to feel the ache of leaving home and family behind. Clippings from newspapers and personal memories tell of the pain of fear and prejudice in the new country. We learn about the building of the transcontinental railroad and how Chinese immigrants were the backbone of the work force, toiling long hours under the worst conditions. We see Chinatown spring up wherever the immigrants landed, and we see how the traditions and culture of China were both preserved and altered as the immigrants became Americanized.