Gold Mountain Turned to Dust
Gold Mountain Turned to Dust

Author: John R. Wunder

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Published: 2018-11-01

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0826359396

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Some half million Chinese immigrants settled in the American West in the nineteenth century. In spite of their vital contributions to the economy in gold mining, railroad construction, the founding of small businesses, and land reclamation, the Chinese were targets of systematic political discrimination and widespread violence. This legal history of the Chinese experience in the American West, based on the author’s lifetime of research in legal sources all over the West—from California to Montana to New Mexico—serves as a basic account of the legal treatment of Chinese immigrants in the West. The first two essays deal with anti-Chinese racial violence and judicial discrimination. The remainder of the book examines legal precedents and judicial doctrines derived from Chinese cases in specific western states. The Chinese, Wunder shows, used the American legal system to protect their rights and test a variety of legal doctrines, making vital contributions to the legal history of the American West.

On Gold Mountain
On Gold Mountain

Author: Lisa See

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 9780099409823

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When she was a girl, Lisa See spent summers in the cool, dark recesses of her family`s antiques store in Los Angeles' Chinatown. There, her grandmother and great-aunt told her intriguing, colourful stories about their family`s past - stories of missionaries, concubines, tong wars, glamorous nightclubs, and the determined struggle to triumph over racist laws and discrimination. They spoke of how Lisa`s great-great-grandfather emigrated from his Chinese village to the United States, and how his son followed him. As an adult, See spent fives years collecting the details of her family`s remarkable history. She interviewd nearly one hundred relatives and pored over documents at the National Archives, the immigration office, and in countless attics, basements, and closets for the initmate nuances of her ancestors` lives. The result is a vivid, sweeping family portriat that is att once particular and universal, telling the story not only of one family, but of the Chinese people in America - and of America itself, a country that both welcomes and reviles its immigrants like no other culture in the world.

Staking a Claim: The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung, a Chinese Miner, California, 1852
Staking a Claim: The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung, a Chinese Miner, California, 1852

Author: Laurence Yep

Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Published: 2013-11-26

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0545576660

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Newbery Honor author Laurence Yep's incredible JOURNAL OF WONG MING-CHUNG is now in paperback with a stunning repackaging! In 1852, during the height of the California Gold Rush, ten-year-old Wong makes the dangerous trip to America to live with his uncle, exchanging the famine and war of his native country for brutal bullies and grueling labor in America, Wong joins his uncle and countless others in the effort to strike it rich on the great "Golden Mountain." Unfortunately, he, and most of the rest of the dreamers, soon discover that there's no such thing as a Golden Mountain, only dirt, mud, and occasionally tiny flecks of gold dust--flecks that are to be turned over to the owners of the mines, in return for barely livable wages. However, someone as clever and resourceful as Wong will have to find other ingenious ways of making money if they're going to make it in America. But can they overcome the bitter, racist white Americans to find success?

Gold Dust Woman
Gold Dust Woman

Author: Stephen Davis

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2017-11-21

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1250032903

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Stevie Nicks is a legend of rock, but her energy and magnetism sparked new interest in this icon. At 68, she's one of the most glamorous creatures rock has known, and the rare woman who's a real rock ‘n' roller. Gold Dust Woman gives "the gold standard of rock biographers" (The Boston Globe) his ideal topic: Nicks' work and life are equally sexy and interesting, and Davis delves deeply into each, unearthing fresh details from new, intimate interviews and interpreting them to present a rich new portrait of the star. Just as Nicks (and Lindsay Buckingham) gave Fleetwood Mac the "shot of adrenaline" they needed to become real rock stars—according to Christine McVie—Gold Dust Woman is vibrant with stories and with a life lived large and hard: —How Nicks and Buckingham were asked to join Fleetwood Mac and how they turned the band into stars —The affairs that informed Nicks' greatest songs —Her relationships with the Eagles' Don Henley and Joe Walsh, and with Fleetwood himself —Why Nicks married her best friend's widower —Her dependency on cocaine, drinking and pot, but how it was a decade-long addiction to Klonopin that almost killed her — Nicks’ successful solo career that has her still performing in venues like Madison Square Garden —The cult of Nicks and its extension to chart-toppers like Taylor Swift and the Dixie Chicks

A Chinaman's Chance
A Chinaman's Chance

Author: Liping Zhu

Publisher:

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13:

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Writers and historians have traditionally portrayed Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth-century American West as victims. For them, the American frontier was a place that offered no more than a "Chinaman's chance". By examining the early history of the Boise Basin, Idaho, Liping Zhu challenges the stereotypical image of the Chinese pioneers. Looking at various aspects of their experience, he takes an entirely new approach to the study of this ethnic minority. Between 1863 and 1910, a large number of Chinese immigrants resided in Idaho's Boise Basin, searching for gold. As in many Rocky Mountain mining camps, they comprised a majority of the population. Unlike settlers in many other boom-and-bust western mining towns, the Chinese in the Boise Basin managed to stay there for more than half a century. Like other pioneers, the Chinese immigrants in this unique Rocky Mountain mining region had equal access to the pursuit of happiness. Their basic material needs were guaranteed, and many individuals were able to accumulate a considerable amount of wealth and climb up the economic ladder. The Chinese equality was also seen in frontier justice. To settle the disputes, they frequently challenged white opponents in the various courts as well as in gun battles. Thus, the Chinese played all the stereotypical frontier roles - victors, victims, and villains. Despite occasional conflicts and personal rivalries, race relations between the Chinese and Euroamericans were relativeiy good; cultural accommodation, not confrontation, was the predominant theme. The Idaho Chinese actually received opportunities far beyond what has been assumed.

The Middle Kingdom Under the Big Sky
The Middle Kingdom Under the Big Sky

Author: Mark T. Johnson

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2022-05

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1496231910

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2023 Caroline Bancroft History Prize from the Denver Public Library 2023 WHA W. Turrentine Jackson Award From the earliest days of non-Native settlement of Montana, when Chinese immigrants made up more than 10 percent of the territory's population, Chinese pioneers played a key role in the region's development. But this population, so crucial to Montana's history, remains underrepresented in historical accounts, and popular attention to the Chinese in Montana tends to focus on sensational elements--exoticizing Chinese Montanans and distancing their lived experiences from our modern understanding. The Middle Kingdom under the Big Sky seeks to recover the stories of Montana's Chinese population in their own words and deepen understanding of Chinese experiences in Montana by using a global lens. Mark T. Johnson has mined several large collections of primary documents left by Chinese pioneers, translated into English here for the first time. These collections, spanning the 1880s through the 1950s, provide insight into the pressures the Chinese community faced--from family members back in China and from non-Chinese Montanans--as economic and cultural disturbances complicated acceptance of Chinese residents in the state. Through their own voices Johnson reveals the agency of Chinese Montanans in the history of the American West and China.

Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea

Author: Gary Kinder

Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published: 2009-10-20

Total Pages: 526

ISBN-13: 155584796X

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“Titanic meets Tom Clancy technology” in this national-bestselling account of the SS Central America’s wreckage and discovery (People). September 1875. With nearly six hundred passengers returning from the California Gold Rush, the side-wheel steamer SS Central America encountered a violent storm and sank two hundred miles off the Carolina coast. More than four hundred lives and twenty-one tons of gold were lost. It was a tragedy lost in legend for more than a century—until a brilliant young engineer named Tommy Thompson set out to find the wreck. Driven by scientific curiosity and resentful of the term “treasure hunt,” Thompson searched the deep-ocean floor using historical accounts, cutting-edge sonar technology, and an underwater robot of his own design. Navigating greedy investors, impatient crewmembers, and a competing salvage team, Thompson finally located the wreck in 1989 and sailed into Norfolk with her recovered treasure: gold coins, bars, nuggets, and dust, plus steamer trunks filled with period clothes, newspapers, books, and journals. A great American adventure story, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea is also a fascinating account of the science, technology, and engineering that opened Earth’s final frontier, providing “white-knuckle reading, as exciting as anything . . . in The Perfect Storm” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). “A complex, bittersweet history of two centuries of American entrepreneurship, linked by the mad quest for gold.” —Entertainment Weekly “A ripping true tale of danger and discovery at sea.” —The Washington Post “What a yarn! . . . If you sign on for the cruise, go in knowing that you’re going to miss meals and a lot of sleep.” —Newsweek

In Search of Equality
In Search of Equality

Author: Charles J. McClain

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1994-05-03

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9780520917811

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Charles McClain's illuminating new study probes Chinese efforts to battle manifold discrimination—in housing, employment, and education—in nineteenth-century America. Challenging the stereotypical image of a passive, insular group, McClain reveals a politically savvy population capable of mobilizing to fight mistreatment. He draws on English- and Chinese-language documents and rarely studied sources to chronicle the ways the Chinese sought redress and change in American courts. McClain focuses on the San Francisco Bay Area, the home of almost one-fifth of the fifty thousand Chinese working in California in 1870. He cites cases in which Chinese laundrymen challenged the city of San Francisco's discriminatory building restrictions, and lawsuits brought by parents to protest the exclusion of Chinese children from public schools. While vindication in the courtroom did not always bring immediate change (Chinese schoolchildren in San Francisco continued to be segregated well into the twentieth century), the Chinese community's efforts were instrumental in establishing several legal landmarks. In their battles for justice, the Chinese community helped to clarify many judicial issues, including the parameters of the Fourteenth Amendment and the legal meanings of nondiscrimination and equality. Discussing a wide range of court cases and gleaning their larger constitutional significance, In Search of Equality brings to light an important chapter of American cultural and ethnic history. It should attract attention from American and legal historians, ethnic studies scholars, and students of California culture.

High Noon in Lincoln
High Noon in Lincoln

Author: Robert M. Utley

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 1989-12-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0826325467

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Here is the most detailed and most engagingly narrated history to date of the legendary two-year facedown and shootout in Lincoln. Until now, New Mexico's late nineteenth-century Lincoln County War has served primarily as the backdrop for a succession of mythical renderings of Billy the Kid in American popular culture. "In research, writing, and interpretation, High Noon in Lincoln is a superb book. It is one of the best books (maybe the best) ever written on a violent episode in the West."--Richard Maxwell Brown, author of Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism "A masterful account of the actual facts of the gory Lincoln County War and the role of Billy the Kid. . . . Utley separates the truth from legend without detracting from the gripping suspense and human interest of the story."--Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.