A truly fascinating account of Chinese-American history as traced through the writer’s family, through five generations. Mott Street is titled after a street in New York City’s Chinatown, where many of Chin’s family lived.
Chin brings these stories to light by imagining what some of the scenarios might have been like, with fictionalised scenes that help to fill in some gaps. It takes a bit of getting used to but does help me create in my mind these scenes.
“But when you’re Chinese in America, with roots that stretch back to the Exclusion era, it is the historical record that is a fabulist fabrication, and the oral stories, passed down from generation to generation, like rare, evolving heirlooms, that ultimately hold the keys to the truth.”
I was in awe with the amount of research that Ava Chin dug up about her family. She traces five generations of her Chinese American family, even unearthing their official documents, unofficial documents, collecting oral histories that have been passed down through the generations.
She manages to track down their Chinese Exclusion files on both sides of her family, kept at the National Archives and Records Administration. The government kept extensive files on Chinese immigrants, with meticulous details from their interviews, trying to determine if they were indeed who they said they were. According to the writer, questions even included details like the distance from the village drinking well to the house, descriptions of the house, which family members were alive and were dead. All in a bid to restrict the numbers of Chinese immigrating into the US.
“They call it exclusion,” wrote Chan Kiu Sing, a Methodist minister from Los Angeles, just after Chinese Exclusion was made permanent, “but it is not exclusion, it is extermination.”
The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882. In 1943, 105 (!) Chinese immigrants were allowed to enter each year. But it was only in 1965 with the passing of the Immigration Act that this 105 quota was removed.
I enjoyed this audiobook, which the author herself narrates, but also borrowed the ebook which does show some of the documents and photos that the writer uncovered. Earlier this year, I read Ghosts of Gold Mountain by Gordon H Chang, another extensively researched history of the Chinese who worked on the transcontinental railroad, and would highly recommend it if you’re interested in more Chinese-American history.
Real Life Reading 