Synopsis: Portraits of Pride documents the dramatic life stories of 38 Chinese Americans of World War II and the prior era. Their accomplishments and contributions in science, technology, medicine, and education are largely unknown. Their collective stories in this first of a series of books will present a picture of America in the early 1900s, when the great majority of Chinese Americans were challenged to rise above obstacles in most professions and businesses.

Faithful Generations: Race & New Asian American Churches
AUTHOR: Russell Jeung
PUBLISHER: Rutgers University Press

SYNOPSIS: Religion – both personal faith and institutional congregations – shapes the lives of Chinese Americans in diverse ways. This book examines the role of religion in constructing Chinese American identity throughout our history.

BIOGRAPHY: Russell Jeung teaches Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University . He attends New Hope Covenant Church in Oakland , CA , where he lives with his wife, Joan, and his baby, Matthew.

Becoming Chinese American: A History of Communities and Institutions
Author: Him Mark Lai
Publisher : Altamira Press

SYNOPSIS:Becoming Chinese American discusses the historical and cultural development of Chinese American life in the past century. Representing a singular breadth of knowledge about the Chinese American past, the volume begins with a historical overview of Chinese migration to the United States , followed by critical discussion of the development of key community institutions.

Biography: Him Mark Lai has researched Chinese American history, has written key articles and books, and taught the first college level course on Chinese American history. Active in community cultural activities, Lai produced a weekly hour-long community-based Cantonese language radio program and was coordinator of the Chinese Culture Foundation's “In Search of Roots” program. He was featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education as “the scholar who legitimized the study of Chinese America.”

The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong and the Transformation of American Orientalism
AUTHOR: Karen J. Leong
PUBLISHER: University of California Press

SYNOPSIS: The China Mystique explores how Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, and Mayling Soong Chiang experienced and ultimately embodied American orientalism toward China during the 1930s and 40s. As celebrities popularly associated with China , each woman negotiated what it meant to be Chinese American against the backdrop of the United States ' shifting international relations with China, changing roles of women, and the growth of consumer culture.

BIOGRAPHY: Karen J. Leong is an associate professor in Women's Studies and an affiliate faculty member of Asian Pacific Studies, African and African American Studies, and History, at Arizona State University . Her scholarship focuses on the relationships between gender, race, and nationality as articulated in United States popular culture and diplomacy. She is the author of The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong and the Transformation of American Orientalism ( University of California Press , 2005) and co-coordinator of the Japanese Americans in Arizona oral history project. She is currently writing a book-length manuscript about Asian American masculinity and Hollywood.

Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City
AUTHOR: Mary Lui
PUBLISHER: Princeton University Press

SYNOPSIS: The Chinatown Trunk Mystery offers a fascinating snapshot of social and sexual relations between Chinese and non-Chinese populations in turn-of-the-century New York City through the lens of the unsolved murder of Elsie Sigel whose corpse was found inside a trunk in the midtown apartment of Leon Ling.

BIOGRAPHY: Mary Ting Yi Lui was first introduced to Chinese American history while working as the curator of the Museum of Chinese in the Americas , formerly known as the New York Chinatown History Project. Her research for the museum's first permanent exhibit, “Remembering New York Chinatown,” led her to the unsolved 1909 Elsie Sigel murder case which formed the basis of her book , The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City . In 1992, she left the museum to pursue her PhD in American history and Asian American studies at Cornell University . Aside from The Chinatown Trunk Mystery, she has authored several book reviews and articles in academic journals and anthologies including Hitting Critical Mass , the Journal of Urban History and Reviews in American History . Since fall 2000, Mary Ting Yi Lui has been an Assistant Professor of American Studies and History at Yale University . Her research interests include late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Asian American, immigration, urban, and women's history.

Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s-1920s
AUTHOR: Krystyn R. Moon
PUBLISHER: Rutgers University Press

SYNOPSIS: Yellowface explores the contributions of writers, performers, and songwriters in order to demonstrate how music and performance has played an important role in constructing Chinese and Chinese American stereotypes. The book also looks at Chinese and Chinese American musicians and performers who appeared in a variety of theatrical venues where the displayed their cultural heritage and contested anti-Chinese attitudes.

BIOGRAPHY: Krystyn Moon is an assistant professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta , Georgia where she teaches U.S. cultural and Asian American history. Her research focuses on the history of Asian Americans in American popular music and performance, which has led to her recently published book, Yellowface: Creating of the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s-1920s.

Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America
AUTHOR: Mae M. Ngai
PUBLISHER: Princeton University Press

SYNOPSIS: This book traces the origins of the “illegal alien” in American law and society, explaining why and how illegal migration became the central problem in U.S. immigration policy and the twentieth century. It includes case studies of Filipinos, Mexicans, Japanese, and Chinese who comprised, variously, illegal aliens, alien citizens, colonial subjects, and imported contract workers.

BIOGRAPHY: Mae Ngai is Associate Professor of History at the University of Chicago . She earned her PhD from Columbia University in 1998. Her research and teaching focus on twentieth century U.S. history, with emphasis on immigration and ethnicity (Asian American and comparative), politics and law, and labor. She is active in the university's Center for Human Rights and center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. Her book, Impossible Subjects , won the 2005 Frederick Jackson Turner Prize from the Organization of American Historians, the 2004 Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association, and the 2004 Theodore Salutous Book Prize from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society. She is now writing a multigenerational biography of the Tape family.

Americans First: Chinese American and the Second World War
AUTHOR: K. Scott Wong
PUBLISHER: Harvard University Press

SYNOPSIS: This book examines the identity formation of the generation of Chinese Americans born around 1920 and who came of age during the Second World War. It looks at how the war affected Chinese-Americans both here on the mainland and in Hawai'i and offers the first in-depth study of the Chinese American presence in the military during that war.

BIOGRAPHY: K. Scott Wong is a Professor of History at Williams College where he teaches a variety of courses in Asian American history, comparative immigration history, the history of the American West, and American Studies. He is the author of a number of articles, co-editor with Sucheng Chan, of Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era ( Temple , 1998), and most recently, “ Americans First: Chinese Americans and the Second World War (Harvard University Press).

Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: The Chinatowns of Portland , Oregon
AUTHOR: Marie Rose Wong
PUBLISHER: University of Washington Press

SYNOPSIS: Sweet Cakes, Long Journey chronicles the social and urban history of Portland , Oregon 's first Chinese community. At its height in 1908, Portland had a Chinese vegetable gardening community and an urban Chinatown that partially occupied as many as 70 city blocks, making it the largest Chinatown in terms of geographic coverage.

BIOGRAPHY: Dr. Marie Rose Wong is an Associate Professor and Director of the Bachelor of Public Affairs Program at Seattle University . She teaches courses in Urban Studies that include Asian American Community Development, American Housing Design and the Sustainable Community, and Exploring the American City . She is on the Board of Directors of Interim Community Development Association in the Chinatown/International District and with Historic Seattle. Her scholarship and writing is interdisciplinary and focuses on Asian American communities and the cultural manifestation of design in the built environment. She is currently working on a book about the history of single room occupancy hotels and Asian American community development in Seattle 's Chinatown/International District.

Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards
AUTHOR: Judy Tzu-Chun Wu
PUBLISHER: University of California Press

SYNOPSIS: Dr. Margaret Chung (1889-1959) was the first-known American-born Chinese female physician. She established one of the first western medical clinics in San Francisco 's Chinatown in the 1920s and became a behind-the-scenes political broker during World War II. Through her contacts with white American soldiers, movie stars, and politicians, Chung recruited pilots for the Flying Tigers and lobbied for the creation of WAVES, the U.S. women's naval reserve. This is the first book-length biography of Dr. Margaret Chung. It explores her professional, political as well as transgressive personal life, focusing on her strategies for traversing racial, gender, and sexual boundaries of American society from the late Victorian era through the early Cold War period.

BIOGRAPHY: Judy Tzu-Chun Wu is an associate professor of History as Ohio State University . During the 2005-2006 academic year, she is visiting associate professor at the University of Chicago 's Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. She teaches courses in Asian American History, Women's History, American History, Immigration History, the U.S. West, and the 1960s. She is currently working on a new book project, which examines the influence of Asian culture and politics on American forms of radicalism during the mid-1950s through the 1970s. This new work is currently entitled Radical Orientalism: Asia, Asian America , and American Social Movements.

Yeee-Hah!: Remembrance and Longing
AUTHOR: Albert Hoy Yee
PUBLISHER: Bookman Publishing

SYNOPSIS: Yeee-Hah! analyses definitive issues, such as the Chinese and Jews—two distinct peoples yet similar; the Asian Stereotype—origins, psychological intricacies; and the Pentagon's heroizing metamorphosis of Wernher von Braun and other Nazis while vilifying America's lead rocket scientist, Hsue-shen Tsien of Caltech, who eventually developed China's ICBMs in revenge; and much more.

BIOGRAPHY: Dr. Albert Yee earned degrees from UC Berkeley, San Francisco State and Stanford universities, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Oregon in advanced psychology in 1967. After three years of Army service in Korea and Japan , he worked 40 years as an educator, mostly as professor and academic dean in the U.S. and East Asia before retiring. Helping the White House prepare for President Nixon's 1972 visit to China , he formulated the most tangible outcome of the historic event, which was the educational, cultural, and scientific exchange agreement. Elected a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and other societies, he has published hundreds of works. He will speak to us from his 11th book, Yeee-Hah!: Remembrance and Longing .