On the books, they were enacted in 1882, and they were only repealed during World War II, when our country and China were allies in the war. They effectively halted legal Chinese immigration and blocked a pathway towards our citizenship for over 60 years. It's why people stayed under the same roof for so long.ĪC: The Chinese Exclusion Act laws were our country's first major immigration restrictions. Chinese-Americans grouped together to fight discrimination, and seek refuge through community. The connection lies in a piece of legislation passed in 1882 by President Chester Arthur banning Chinese laborers from coming to America. LA: A remarkable discovery, but less of a coincidence than it seems at first. And the address was the same building where my father was born. Months later, I was asking my maternal grandmother who raised me about her being raised in Chinatown, and she admitted that she too was born at home. And see that other window over there? That's where your great-grandparents lived." And then the first window that he pointed to, that's where he was born. And he said, "See that window over there? That's where your grandparents live. When we were walking out of his office and onto the street, he pointed out a six-floor, red brick tenement apartment building, dating back to 1915. You know, um, anyway, and it also held my father's office, and that's where I first met him for the first time. It's got, you know, uh, hair salons, and the first xiaolongbao place, the first soup dumpling place in the city. It's go- it's only two blocks long, but it's got everything. This very short block, it's called Pell Street. I first meet my father on one of the main streets in Chinatown, in old Chinatown. And then I was a- I met them, and then I met my father. And then eventually, she picked up her jaw off the floor and called me back. LA: All right, my favorite music genre, so-ĪC: So I called the switchboard, and I got her voicemail, and I left a message. But what surprised me was when I went to school, and I opened up the big textbooks on American history, and I looked at the one chapter about the completion of the railroad and how important it was, right? And the official photograph did not have a single Chinese face in the photo. And so I always grew up knowing that we had this connection to this apparatus that, you know, really meant something, that unified the country from coast to coast. So, so, so, so that's how much pride we had in, in, in the building of the railroad. And in fact, actually, his first words in English were the names of the railroad companies that built the railroad. And my grandfather loved telling stories about his grandfather working on the railroad. So, um, her husband my grandfather, was the grandson of a Chinese railroad worker who worked on the nation's first transcontinental railroad, which unified the country after the Civil War. Um, did you get a sense that things were being shielded from you, or hidden, or a certain family story was getting told to you and you knew there was more?ĪC: Yes, absolutely. So when you were, you know, going through these photo albums, um, and asking her all these questions, I mean, I feel like I always used to, with my grandmother, um, the line I used to trot out, which in retrospect was quite offensive, is I used to say "Tell me about the olden days," and then she would like, you know, have a, have all these stories she'd go to and she'd tell me the same stories over and over again. LA: So you said that she didn't want to air the dirty laundry. Sometimes she didn't wanna talk to me, but other times, um, you know, she would open up, and that was always nothing short of marvelous. Growing up, there were my grandmother's photo albums, giant photo albums as thick as Bibles, and I would sit there and pore over them on Saturday afternoons, and ask her, "Grandma, who's that person?" Um, and, "Oh, who's that white woman who's sitting next to your uncle?" Right? Um, and, "Tell me about your father and your mother, and how she came over." And so, um, you know, my grandmother was raised as a proper Lutheran, and she didn't like to air the dirty laundry. But I had absolutely no idea that the side of my family that I was estranged from, my father's side, a side that felt very shadowy and elusive, was right there the entire time. So New York's, Manhattan's Chinatown was where we went to go grocery shopping. Flushing wasn't, and Queens wasn't the multicultural mecca that it is today. AC: So back then, it felt enormously different.
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