Driven out: the forgotten war against Chinese Americans

Jean Pfaelzer

University of California Press, 2008 - History - 400 pages

Driven Out exposes a shocking story of ethnic cleansing in California and the Pacific Northwest when the first Chinese Americans were rounded up and purged from more than three hundred communities by lawless citizens and duplicitous politicians. From 1848 into the twentieth century, Chinatowns burned across the West as Chinese miners and merchants, lumberjacks and fieldworkers, prostitutes and merchants' wives were violently loaded onto railroad cars or steamers, marched out of town, or killed.
But the Chinese fought back--with arms, strikes, and lawsuits and by flatly refusing to leave. When red posters appeared on barns and windows across the United States urging the Chinese to refuse to carry photo identity cards, more than one hundred thousand joined the largest mass civil disobedience to date in the United States. The first Chinese Americans were marched out and starved out. But even facing brutal pogroms, they stood up for their civil rights. This is a story that defines us as a nation and marks our humanity.

What people are saying

Review: Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans

User Review  - Michael Connolly - Goodreads

Having been born and raised in California, I was surprised to learn that the Chinese had lived not only in San Francisco and Los Angeles, but also many rural areas in the northern part of the state ...

Review: Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans

User Review  - Lucius - Goodreads

Having grown up in Northern California, I was amazed to learn how much history has been wiped away in the past 150 years. The contributions to building California have been left out of the history ...

Contents

• I: 3
• II: 47
• III: 89
• IV: 121
• V: 167
• VI: 198
• VII: 252
• VIII: 291
• IX: 336
• X: 347
• XI: 353
• XII: 389

About the author

Jean Pfaelzer is Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Delaware. She is author of The Utopian Novel in America, 1886-1896: The Politics of Form, among other books. She was Executive Director of the National Labor Law Center and was appointed to the Washington DC Commission for Women.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Driven out: the forgotten war against Chinese Americans
• Author: Jean Pfaelzer
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: University of California Press, 2008
• ISBN: 0520256948, 9780520256941
• Length: 400 pages
• Subjects: History / United States / 19th Century; History / United States / General; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / Asian American Studies; Social Science / Minority Studies