Strangers in the Land

Michael Luo traces the history of Chinese Americans from the mid-1800s, when laborers arrived for the gold rush and the transcontinental railroad, through the rise of anti-Chinese violence and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, and onward to the 1965 reforms that finally reopened the gates to immigrants like his own parents. Drawing on archives from across the country, he sets sweeping national history against intimate stories of families, activists, and ordinary people caught in cycles of welcome and rejection. The book takes its title from an 1889 Supreme Court opinion that branded Chinese immigrants "strangers in the land," and it traces a century-long struggle to belong.