Made in Chinatown delves into a little-known aspect of Australia’s past: its hundreds of Chinese furniture factories. These businesses thrived in the post-goldrush era, becoming an important economic activity for Chinese immigrants and their descendants and a vital part of Australia’s furniture industry. Yet, owing to an exclusionary vision for Australia as a bastion of ‘white’ industry and labour, these factories were targeted by anti-Chinese political campaigns and legislative restrictions. Guided by Chinese manufacturers’ and workers’ own reflections and records, this book examines how these factories operated under the exclusionary vision of White Australia. Historian Peter Gibson uses previously untapped archival sources to investigate the local and international factors that boosted the industry, and the business and labour practices associated with factory operation. He explores the strategies employed in efforts to resist injustice, and the place of Chinese furniture factories within the contexts of Australian enterprise, work and consumerism more broadly. Made in Chinatown argues that Chinese Australian furniture manufacturers and their employees were far more adaptable, and the White Australia vision less pervasive, than most histories would suggest.

Made in Chinatown delves into a little-known aspect of Australia’s past: its hundreds of Chinese furniture factories. These businesses thrived in the post-goldrush era, becoming an important economic activity for Chinese immigrants and their descendants and a vital part of Australia’s furniture industry. Yet, owing to an exclusionary vision for Australia as a bastion of ‘white’ industry and labour, these factories were targeted by anti-Chinese political campaigns and legislative restrictions. Guided by Chinese manufacturers’ and workers’ own reflections and records, this book examines how these factories operated under the exclusionary vision of White Australia. Historian Peter Gibson uses previously untapped archival sources to investigate the local and international factors that boosted the industry, and the business and labour practices associated with factory operation. He explores the strategies employed in efforts to resist injustice, and the place of Chinese furniture factories within the contexts of Australian enterprise, work and consumerism more broadly. Made in Chinatown argues that Chinese Australian furniture manufacturers and their employees were far more adaptable, and the White Australia vision less pervasive, than most histories would suggest.

JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER • The acclaimed chef behind the Michelin-starred Mister Jiu’s restaurant shares the past, present, and future of Chinese cooking in America through 90 mouthwatering recipes. ONE OF THE TEN BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, San Francisco Chronicle • ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: Glamour • “Brandon Jew’s affection for San Francisco’s Chinatown and his own Chinese heritage is palpable in this cookbook, which is both a recipe collection and a portrait of a district rich in history.”—Fuchsia Dunlop, James Beard Award-winning author of The Food of Sichuan Brandon Jew trained in the kitchens of California cuisine pioneers and Michelin-starred Italian institutions before finding his way back to Chinatown and the food of his childhood. Through deeply personal recipes and stories about the neighborhood that often inspires them, this groundbreaking cookbook is an intimate account of how Chinese food became American food and the making of a Chinese American chef. Jew takes inspiration from classic Chinatown recipes to create innovative spins like Sizzling Rice Soup, Squid Ink Wontons, Orange Chicken Wings, Liberty Roast Duck, Mushroom Mu Shu, and Banana Black Sesame Pie. From the fundamentals of Chinese cooking to master class recipes, he interweaves recipes and techniques with stories about their origins in Chinatown and in his own family history. And he connects his classical training and American roots to Chinese traditions in chapters celebrating dim sum, dumplings, and banquet-style parties. With more than a hundred photographs of finished dishes as well as moving and evocative atmospheric shots of Chinatown, this book is also an intimate portrait—a look down the alleyways, above the tourist shops, and into the kitchens—of the neighborhood that changed the flavor of America.

Chinatown Pretty features beautiful portraits and heartwarming stories of trend-setting seniors across six Chinatowns. Andria Lo and Valerie Luu have been interviewing and photographing Chinatown's most fashionable elders on their blog and Instagram, Chinatown Pretty, since 2014. Chinatown Pretty is a signature style worn by pòh pohs (grandmas) and gùng gungs (grandpas) everywhere—but it's also a life philosophy, mixing resourcefulness, creativity, and a knack for finding joy even in difficult circumstances. • Photos span Chinatowns in San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and Vancouver. • The style is a mix of modern and vintage, high and low, handmade and store bought clothing. • This is a celebration of Chinese American culture, active old-age, and creative style. Chinatown Pretty shares nuggets of philosophical wisdom and personal stories about immigration and Chinese-American culture. This book is great for anyone looking for advice on how to live to a ripe old age with grace and good humor—and, of course, on how to stay stylish. • This book will resonate with photography buffs, fashionistas, and Asian Americans of all ages. • Chinatown Pretty has been featured by Vogue.com, San Francisco Chronicle, Design Sponge, Rookie, Refinery29, and others. • With a textured cover and glossy bellyband, this beautiful volume makes a deluxe gift. • Add it to the shelf with books like Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton, Advanced Style by Ari Seth Cohen, and Fruits by Shoichi Aoki.

From the bestselling author of Searching for Sylvie Lee and Girl in Translation, an inspiring novel about a young woman torn between her family duties in Chinatown and her escape into a more Western world. Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Wong grew up in New York’s Chinatown, the older daughter of a Beijing ballerina and a noodle maker. Though an ABC (American-born Chinese), Charlie’s entire life has been limited to this small area. Now grown, she lives in the same tiny apartment with her widower father and her eleven-year-old sister, and works—miserably—as a dishwasher. But when she lands a job as a receptionist at a ballroom dance studio, Charlie gains access to a world she hardly knew existed, and everything she once took to be certain turns upside down. Gradually, at the dance studio, awkward Charlie’s natural talents begin to emerge. With them, her perspective, expectations, and sense of self are transformed—something she must take great pains to hide from her father and his suspicion of all things Western. As Charlie blossoms, though, her sister becomes chronically ill. As Pa insists on treating his ailing child exclusively with Eastern practices to no avail, Charlie is forced to try to reconcile her two selves and her two worlds—Eastern and Western, old world and new—to rescue her little sister without sacrificing her newfound confidence and identity.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comes "one of the funniest books of the year.... A delicious, ambitious Hollywood satire" (The Washington Post). A deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play. Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it? After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he’s ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family. Infinitely inventive and deeply personal, exploring the themes of pop culture, assimilation, and immigration—Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.

Never A Viable Alternative is more than the memoir of an award-winning actor. Here, Ray Barry digs deep and provides us all with a "Master Class" on what it takes to be a successful working artist, and a solid human being. Raymond J. Barry offers readers deeply moving, insightful and inspiring insights into what it takes to survive a violent upbringing and then to live in poverty while trying to make it as an artist and an actor, before finally making it big, in such films as Year of the Dragon, Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Man Walking, Walk Hard and on television series including X-Files, The 100, Gotham and Justified. Within the pages of his memoir, Barry offers solid advice for those trying to make is as actors and artists.

CHINATOWN, U.S.A.: a state of mind, a world within a world, a neighborhood that exists in more cities than you might imagine. Every day, Americans find "something different" in Chinatown's narrow lanes and overflowing markets, tasting exotic delicacies from a world apart or bartering for a trinket on the street -- all without ever leaving the country. It's a place that's foreign yet familiar, by now quite well known on the Western cultural radar, but splitting the difference still gives many visitors to Chinatown the sense, above all, that things are not what they seem -- something everyone in popular culture, from Charlie Chan to Jack Nicholson, has been telling us for decades. And it's true that few visitors realize just how much goes on beneath the surface of this vibrant microcosm, a place with its own deeply felt history and stories of national cultural significance. But Chinatown is not a place that needs solving; it's a place that needs a more specific telling. In American Chinatown, acclaimed travel writer Bonnie Tsui takes an affectionate and attentive look at the neighborhood that has bewitched her since childhood, when she eagerly awaited her grandfather's return from the fortune-cookie factory. Tsui visits the country's four most famous Chinatowns -- San Francisco (the oldest), New York (the biggest), Los Angeles (the film icon), Honolulu (the crossroads) -- and makes her final, fascinating stop in Las Vegas (the newest; this Chinatown began as a mall); in her explorations, she focuses on the remarkable experiences of ordinary people, everyone from first-to fifth-generation Chinese Americans. American Chinatown breaks down the enigma of Chinatown by offering narrative glimpses: intriguing characters who reveal the realities and the unexpected details of Chinatown life that American audiences haven't heard. There are beauty queens, celebrity chefs, immigrant garment workers; there are high school kids who are changing inner-city life in San Francisco, Chinese extras who played key roles in 1940s Hollywood, new arrivals who go straight to dealer school in Las Vegas hoping to find their fortunes in their own vision of "gold mountain." Tsui's investigations run everywhere, from mom-and-pop fortune-cookie factories to the mall, leaving no stone unturned. By interweaving her personal impressions with the experiences of those living in these unique communities, Tsui beautifully captures their vivid stories, giving readers a deeper look into what "Chinatown" means to its inhabitants, what each community takes on from its American home, and what their experience means to America at large. For anyone who has ever wandered through Chinatown and wondered what it was all about, and for Americans wanting to understand the changing face of their own country, American Chinatown is an all-access pass.

Detective Jack Yu is assigned to the Chinatown precinct as the only officer of Chinese descent. He investigates a series of attacks on children and a missing mistress, shifting between the world of street thugs and gangs and the Chinatown of the rich and powerful. When Detective Jack Yu is transferred to New York’s Chinatown, he isn’t ready to face the changes in his old neighborhood. His childhood friends are now hardened gangsters, his father is dying, and he is constantly reminded of this teenage blood brother, murdered in front of him years before. Then community leader and tong boss Uncle Four is gunned down and his mistress goes missing. But unlike the rest of the culturally clueless police department, Jack knows his district’s gritty secrets. He will have to draw on his knowledge in order to catch this killer in a crime-ridden precinct where brotherhoods are just as likely to distribute charity as mete out vigilante justice.