Beth Lew-Williams, “The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America” (Harvard UP, 2018)

New Books in Asian American Studies · May 28, 2018 · 53m

The American West erupted in anti-Chinese violence in 1885. Following the massacre of Chinese miners in Wyoming Territory, communities throughout California and the Pacific Northwest harassed, assaulted, and expelled thousands of Chinese immigrants. In The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (Harvard University Press, 2018). Beth Lew-Williams shows how American immigration policies incited this violence and how the violence, in turn, provoked new exclusionary policies. Ultimately, Lew-Williams argues, Chinese expulsion and exclusion produced the…