Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming; Ava Chin

USD 9.43

As the only child of a single mother in Queens, Ava Chin found her family’s origins to be shrouded in mystery. She had never met her father, and her grandparents’ stories didn’t match the history she read at school. Mott Street traces Chin’s quest to understand her Chinese American family’s story. Over decades of painstaking research, she finds not only her father but also the building that provided a refuge for them all.Breaking the silence surrounding her family’s past meant confronting the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—the first federal law to restrict immigration by race and nationality, barring Chinese immigrants from citizenship for six decades. Chin traces the story of the pioneering family members who emigrated from the Pearl River Delta, crossing an ocean to make their way in the American West of the mid-nineteenth century. She tells of their backbreaking work on the transcontinental railroad and of the brutal racism of frontier towns, then follows their paths to New York City.In New York’s Chinatown she discovers a single building on Mott Street where so many of her ancestors would live, begin families, and craft new identities. She follows the men and women who became merchants, “paper son” refugees, activists, and heads of the Chinese tong, piecing together how they bore and resisted the weight of the Exclusion laws. She soon realizes that exclusion is not simply a political condition but also a personal one.Gorgeously written, deeply researched, and tremendously resonant, Mott Street uncovers a legacy of exclusion and resilience that speaks to the American experience, past and present. April 25, 2023 About the Author Ava Chin is the author of the forthcoming MOTT STREET (Penguin Press, April 2023). Her food memoir, "Eating Wildly," was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award 2014 (Food) and named to Library Journal's Best Books of 2014 list (Memoir). The editor of "Split," she's written for the NY Times (as the Urban Forager), the LA Times Magazine, the Village Voice, and SPIN. Before earning an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, and a PhD from the University of Southern California, she was a downtown slam poet who contributed to the alternative rock band Soul Coughing's album El Oso. A professor of creative nonfiction and journalism at the City University of New York, Ava lives in Manhattan with her husband and daughter.