Friday, April 17, 2026 | 6pm to 7:30pm
25 West 43rd Street, 10th Floor, Room 1000
between 5th & 6th Avenues, Manhattan
In-Person: RSVP | Zoom: RSVP
Born to Chinese immigrant parents, the Moy siblings grew up in an America that questioned their citizenship and denied their equality. Sophisticated and self-consciously modern, they challenged limitations and stereotypes in the United States and sought new opportunities in China’s tumultuous republic. Sometimes the risks they took paid off, but their occasional recklessness also led to infidelity, divorce, bankruptcy, and worse. Those in China faced pressure to collaborate with Japanese occupiers, making choices that had serious consequences for their siblings in the United States.
Charlotte Brooks’s gripping tale follows the family back and forth across the Pacific and through two world wars, China’s Nationalist and Communist revolutions, and the Cold War—events that the siblings and their spouses helped shape. The Moys’ incredible story offers a kaleidoscopic view of an entire generation’s struggle for acceptance and belonging.
Purchase Book: www.ucpress.edu/books/the-moys-of-new-york-and-shanghai/hardcover
Author Bio
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.
