During the Cold War, Chinese Americans struggled to gain political influence in the United States. Considered potentially sympathetic to communism, their communities attracted substantial public and government scrutiny, particularly in San Francisco and New York.
Between Mao and McCarthy looks at the divergent ways that Chinese Americans in these two cities balanced domestic and international pressures during the tense Cold War era. On both coasts, Chinese Americans sought to gain political power and defend their civil rights, yet only the San Franciscans succeeded. Forging multiracial coalitions and encouraging voting and moderate activism, they avoided the deep divisions and factionalism that consumed their counterparts in New York. Drawing on extensive research in both Chinese- and English-language sources, Charlotte Brooks uncovers the complex, diverse, and surprisingly vibrant politics of an ethnic group trying to find its voice and flex its political muscle in Cold War America.
Charlotte Brooks is Professor of History at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center. A scholar of race, immigration, and urban history, she has published widely on Asian American history, especially Chinese American and Chinese diaspora history.
In addition to The Moys of New York and Shanghai: One Family’s Extraordinary Journey Through War and Revolution (University of California Press, 2026), she is the author of three other books. American Exodus: Second Generation Chinese Americans in China, 1901-1949 (University of California Press, 2019) explores the lives and choices of the thousands of Chinese American citizens who left the United States for China to escape racism and build careers. Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years (University of Chicago Press, 2015) is a comparative study of Chinese American political activism in New York and San Francisco between World War Two and the late 1960s. Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California (University of Chicago Press, 2009) uses Asian Americans’ experiences with housing discrimination to explore the startlingly rapid racial transformation of mid-century urban California.
Prof. Brooks’ articles have also appeared in numerous journals, including the Journal of American History, the Journal of American Ethnic History, and the Journal of Urban History, and her work has been reprinted in The Best American History Essays.
