Asian American / Asian Research Institute
The City University of New York
During the McCarthy era, the loyalties of over ten thousand American citizens of Chinese descent were questioned based on their ethnicity and alleged risk to national security. CHINATOWN FILES explores the roots and legacy of the Cold War on the Chinese American community during the 1950s and 1960s, and presents the firsthand accounts by seven men and women of being hunted down, jailed and targeted for deportation in America.
In the first decades of the 20th century, almost half of the Chinese Americans born in the United States moved to China—a relocation they assumed would be permanent. At a time when people from around the world flocked to the United States, this little-noticed emigration belied America’s image as a magnet for immigrants and a land of upward mobility for all. Fleeing racism, Chinese Americans who sought greater opportunities saw China, a tottering empire and then a struggling republic, as their promised land. American Exodus is the first book to explore this extraordinary migration of Chinese Americans.