Chinese Chicago:
Race, Transnational Migration, and Community Since 1870
By Huping Ling
Published by Stanford University Press, 2012

Review
“A unique and valuable study, sure to deepen our understanding of extra-national migratory studies in the development of modernity.”—John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York University & Museum of Chinese in America

“Huping Ling, a prolific and leading scholar of Chinese America, gives us yet another refreshingly exciting book. An excellent community study, it offers fascinating stories about various aspects of Chinese America life in the community, ranging from food, laundry-shop work, school life, and family life in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Chicago. The book situates these stories in larger contexts, specially the Chinese American transnational world, providing extraordinary insights into the connection between the local and the global. It also connects the past to the present by taking an in-depth look at the post-war forces that have transformed and continue to transform Chinese Chicago.”—Yong Chen, author of Chinese San Francisco, 1850-1943: A Trans-Pacific Community
Product Description
Numerous studies have documented the transnational experiences and local activities of Chinese immigrants in California and New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Less is known about the vibrant Chinese American community that developed at the same time in Chicago. In this sweeping account, Huping Ling offers the first comprehensive history of Chinese in Chicago, beginning with the arrival of the pioneering Moy brothers in the 1870s and continuing to the present.

Ling focuses on how race, transnational migration, and community have defined Chinese in Chicago. Drawing upon archival documents in English and Chinese, she charts how Chinese made a place for themselves among the multiethnic neighborhoods of Chicago, cultivating friendships with local authorities and consciously avoiding racial conflicts. Ling takes readers through the decades, exploring evolving family structures and relationships, the development of community organizations, and the operation of transnational businesses. She pays particular attention to the influential role of Chinese in Chicago’s academic and intellectual communities and to the complex and conflicting relationships among today’s more dispersed Chinese Americans in Chicago.
About the Author
Huping Ling is Professor of History at Truman State University and Executive Editor for the Journal of Asian American Studies. She has published eleven books and over one hundred articles. Most recently, she coedited Asian American History and Culture: An Encyclopedia (2010).

Visit us at www.sup.org

Professor of History Sally West has published I Shop in Moscow: Advertising and the Creation of Consumer Culture in Late Tsarist Russia.

This groundbreaking book is the first to study the cultural history of advertising in imperial Russia. In the first part of the book, West describes the development of advertising as an industry, discussing responses from both the business community and the state. The emergence of Russian advertising and consumer culture played a formative role in unsettling traditional tsarist society by promoting the aspirations of self-fulfillment through consumption. Encouraging a consumerist ethic at odds with an autocratic society, advertising spoke the language of both tradition and modernity, simultaneously perpetuating and undermining the values of the past. The rise of pervasive, mass-circulation advertising in tsarist society created paradoxes that reflect the tensions in late imperial Russia—a peasant society swiftly becoming a world industrial power, a modernizing economy within a patriarchal culture, and a population becoming consumers and citizens while still subjects of the tsar.

West presents a cultural study of central themes that form the advertising messages themselves, including consumption as a progressive and civilizing force, the deliberate creation of “consumer” as a new identity, the perpetuation and reformulation of gender roles, and the appropriation and commodification of Russian cultural motifs. In an analysis of the advertisements themselves, West incorporates numerous illustrations from the mass-circulation press and the poster collection of the Russian National Library, many of which are difficult to access and unknown to most scholars.

I Shop in Moscow offers an unexplored perspective for anyone interested in the comparative study of consumer culture and advertising. West’s original study will appeal to scholars and students of advertising and Russian history, as well as those working in gender studies, folklore, and cultural history.

Professor of History Marc Becker has published José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology.

José Carlos Mariátegui is one of Latin America’s most profound but overlooked thinkers. A self-taught journalist, social scientist, and activist from Peru, he was the first to emphasize that those fighting for the revolutionary transformation of society must adapt classical Marxist theory to the particular conditions of Latin America. He also stressed that indigenous peoples must take an active, if not leading, role in any revolutionary struggle.

Today Latin America is the scene of great social upheaval. More progressive governments are in power than ever before, and grassroots movements of indigenous peoples, workers, and peasants are increasingly shaping the political landscape. The time is perfect for a rediscovery of Mariátegui, who is considered an intellectual precursor of today’s struggles in Latin America but virtually unknown in the English-speaking world. This volume collects his essential writings, including many that have never been translated and some that have never been published. The scope of this collection, masterful translation, and thoughtful commentary make it an essential book for scholars of Latin America and all of those fighting for a new world, waiting to be born.

Professor of History Dan Mandell has been elected to the membership of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, founded 1892, “a non-profit educational foundation designed to promote the study of Massachusetts history from earliest settlement through the first decades of the nineteenth century.” The society publishes documents (through the University of Virginia Press) and organizes conferences related to that period. Before 1950, membership was limited to descendants of Massachusetts Bay or Plymouth colonists.

Dr. Mandell has also been elected a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, “an independent research library that collects, preserves, makes accessible, and communicates manuscripts and other materials that promote the study of the history of Massachusetts and the nation.” Founded in 1791, it is the first such organization in the United States. It is an outstanding research place, and their web site features a large number of digitized pamphlets and broadsides from the Revolution, a huge number of the Adams Papers (original mss and transcription), and many other items.

The Women’s Resource Center provides history professor Huping Ling a Woman of Distinction Awards. http://newsletter.truman.edu/article.asp?id=6162

Burning Issues in Asian American Studies

Public Lecture by Dr. Huping Ling
Professor of History, Truman
Award-winning historian and Author

Tuesday April 19, 2011
7:30-8:30pm
BH 251

Sponsored by SSAS
Multicultural Affairs

For Asian American Heritage Month
At Truman

令狐萍教授：亚美研究热辨

*How does the status of Asian Americans in the United States change over times?

*How do we face the new challenges in a “China-Ascendance and US-Decline” global environment?

An internationally renowned historian and prolific and influential writer, Ling is Professor of History at Truman and Executive Editor of The Journal of Asian American Studies for the Association for Asian American Studies. A prize-winning author, she has published eleven books and over one hundred articles on Asian America. Her book Chinese St. Louis: From Enclave to Cultural Community (2004) is a classic work on ethnic American communities in the Midwest. Her recent book Asian American History and Culture: An Encyclopedia (2010) is the winner of Booklist/Reference Books Bulletin Editors’ Choice 2010 Award. She is frequently invited to lecture on China and Asian America nationally and internationally and routinely appears on lists of notable Asian Americans and authors. She is a consultant to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of Guangdong Provincial Government, and a Guest Professor at Wuhan Theoretical Research Center of Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council in China.

History Professor Jerrold Hirsch was the keynote speaker at the Writing Democracy conference in March 2011.

News Release:
Huping Ling’s Book Asian American History and Culture:
An Encyclopedia Won Awards!

Asian American History and Culture: An Encyclopedia
Edited by: Huping Ling; Allan W. Austin

Booklist/Reference Books Bulletin Editors’ Choice

Huping Ling’s book Asian American History and Cultures: An Encyclopedia (Two volumes, with Allan W. Austin, M. E. Sharpe, 2010) has won the Booklist/Reference Books Bulletin Editors’ Choice Award in 2010.

With overview essays and more than 400 A-Z entries, this exhaustive encyclopedia documents the history of Asians in America from earliest contact to the present day. Organized topically by group, with an in-depth overview essay on each group, the encyclopedia examines the myriad ethnic groups and histories that make up the Asian American population in the United States.

Asian American History and Culture covers the political, social, and cultural history of immigrants from East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Pacific Islands, and their descendents, as well as the social and cultural issues faced by Asian American communities, families, and individuals in contemporary society. In addition to entries on various groups and cultures, the encyclopedia also includes articles on general topics such as parenting and child rearing, assimilation and acculturation, business, education, and literature. More than 100 images round out the set.

Reviews have highly recommended the book. “Here is a unique reference work focusing on the history, culture, contributions, and challenges of a variety of Asian-origin groups in the U.S. … This is an excellent resource that will be used wherever there are immigrant communities or where students need a starting point for research topics. Great for high-school, college, and public libraries.” Booklist (starred review)

“This well-realized introduction to the culture and history of 21 ethnic groups includes the largest and most prominent–those that have their origins in China, the Philippines, India, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan–as well as smaller groups such as Bangladeshi-, Burmese-, Mongolian-, and Tibetan-Americans. … The text is clear and balanced, and occasionally profound. … This excellent, up-to-date resource will prove valuable to general readers and students.” School Library Journal

(http://www.mesharpe.com/awards.asp)

Marc Becker has published Pachakutik: Indigenous Movements and Electoral Politics in Ecuador with Rowman & Littlefield.

This authoritative book provides a deeply informed overview of one of the most dynamic social movements in Latin America. Focusing on contemporary Indigenous movements in Ecuador, leading scholar Marc Becker traces the growing influence of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), which in 1990 led a powerful uprising that dramatically placed a struggle for Indigenous rights at the center of public consciousness. Activists began to refer to this uprising as a “pachakutik,” a Kichwa word that means change, rebirth, and transformation, both in the sense of a return in time and the coming of a new era. Five years later, proponents launched a new political movement called Pachakutik to compete for elected office. In 2006, Ecuadorians elected Rafael Correa, who many saw as emblematic of the new Latin American left, to the presidency of the country. Even though CONAIE, Pachakutik, and Correa shared similar concerns for social justice, they soon came into conflict with each other.

Becker examines the competing strategies and philosophies that emerge when social movements and political parties embrace comparable visions but follow different paths to realize their objectives. In exploring the multiple and conflictive strategies that Indigenous movements have followed over the past twenty years, he definitively documents the recent history and charts the trajectory of one of the Americas’ most powerful and best organized social movements.

David Robinson was interviewed on his research and forthcoming publications for Fechner Day, October 22 at http://ahp.apps01.yorku.ca/?p=883.