Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community

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Friday, November 7, 2025 | 5:30pm to 7pm

In Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community (Stanford University Press, 2024), historian William Gow argues that Chinese Americans in Los Angeles strategically used their performances in both Hollywood films and Chinatown tourist attractions to influence perceptions of race and national identity during the Chinese Exclusion Era. Drawing on oral histories and archival research, the book reveals how these performances were tied to restrictive immigration laws, beginning with the 1875 Page Act. By focusing on the experiences of everyday people—from movie extras to merchants—Performing Chinatown uncovers the long-overlooked history of how Los Angeles’s Chinatown and Hollywood shaped each other and, in turn, shaped Asian American identity.

Purchase Book (Discount Code – Gow20): https://www.sup.org/books/asian-american-studies/performing-chinatown

Author Bio

William Gow is a Sacramento-based community historian, educator, and documentary filmmaker. A fourth-generation Chinese American and a proud graduate of the San Francisco Unified School District, he holds an M.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies with a designated emphasis in Film Studies from UC Berkeley. For the past twenty years, he has served as a volunteer historian with the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California (CHSSC), a non-profit devoted to documenting the history of Chinese Americans in Southern California. At the CHSSC, he co-directs the Five Chinatowns project, which examines the history of the various Chinatowns that existed in Los Angeles between 1875 and 1965. His book, Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community, was published by Stanford University Press in May of 2024. He also currently works as an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies in the Ethnic Studies Department at California State University, Sacramento.