Southern Fried Rice - Laundry Life in Augusta

[helen]

Has any one read this book by John Jung - well worth reading - nearly everything mirrored my childhood in NZ..

This memoir conveys the experiences, first of my parents and subsequently of our family, the only Chinese people living in Macon, Georgia between 1928 and 1956. It describes our family's isolated existence running a laundry, enduring loneliness as well as racial prejudice for over 20 years, why and how it moved across the continent to live in a Chinese community, and how each family member adjusted to the challenges and opportunities of their new lives.

[Henry]

John's book has been very well received at various venues across the US.

He is now working on a sequel

[raymond]

........well, aside from reading his book for details, read about John Jung's experience as a Chinese laundry man in Georgia at his website: jrjung.tripod.com/ Similar experiences were encountered by Chinese immigrants from the Sze Yup region (siyi in Mandarin) of Guangdong Province who owned and operated grocery stores in the USA Deep South beginning in the early 1900's, particularly in the Mississippi Delta region.

[helen]

The book is great. I have received a copy in New Zealand.

Chinese Laundries: Tickets To Survival On Gold Mountain

A social history of the role of the Chinese laundry on the survival of early Chinese immigrants in the U.S.during the Chinese Exclusion law period, 1882-1943, and in Canada during the years of the Head Tax, 1885-1923, and exclusion law, 1923-1947. Why and how Chinese got into the laundry business and how they had to fight discriminatory laws and competition from white-owned laundries to survive. Description of their lives, work demands, and living conditions. Reflections by a sample of children who grew up living in the backs of their laundries provide vivid first-person glimpses of the difficult lives of Chinese laundrymen and their families.

A social history of the role of the Chinese laundry on the survival of early Chinese immigrants in the U.S.during the Chinese Exclusion law period, 1882-1943, and in Canada during the years of the Head Tax, 1885-1923, and exclusion law, 1923-1947. Why and how Chinese got into the laundry business and how they had to fight discriminatory laws and competition from white-owned laundries to survive. Description of their lives, work demands, and living conditions. Reflections by a sample of children who grew up living in the backs of their laundries provide vivid first-person glimpses of the difficult lives of Chinese laundrymen and their families.

[helen]

New Book : Chopsticks in the land of cotton - The story of how Chinese immigrants found their way to the Mississippi River Delta in the late 1800s and earned their living operating small family grocery stores in neighborhoods where mostly black cotton plantation workers lived. What was their status in the segregated black and white world of that region? How did this small group maintain their culture and ethnic identity? What has happened to these merchants and their families over the years?

www.goodreads.com/story/show/12302.Chopsticks_in_the_Land_of_Cotton

[laohuaqiao]

Re: Chopsticks in the land of cotton - The story of how Chinese immigrants found their way to the Mississippi River Delta in the late 1800s ...

Reminds me of a film documentary by Christine Choy entitled "Mississippi Triangle", where triangle refers to both the river delta region and the race relationship among the Chinese Americans, African Americans and whites.

A synopsis:

In 1984, as this well-researched documentary shows, there were over 5,000 Chinese living in one sector of northwestern Mississippi, where the three predominant races (Caucasian, Afro-American, East Asian) are segregated. In a sensitive recording of cultural, linguistic, culinary, and religious customs, this film provides some historical background on Chinese immigration and shows the weddings and funerals and entertainments that characterize the Chinese neighborhoods in the region. Their ethnic distinctiveness is contrasted with the music (blues, gospel, country) and culture prevalent among the black and white communities. It is a depressing commentary on the tenacity of racism that the film crews for this documentary had to be divided into three separate units of Chinese, whites, and Afro-Americans in order to go into the various neighborhoods of the target area and operate in safety and with the confidence of those being filmed.