- The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics
- By Mae Ngai, in conversation with Jia Lynn Yang
- Tuesday, October 19, 2021—6pm ET
- Presented by the Boston Public Library, American Ancestors/NEHGS, the Boston Book Festival, and the State Library of Massachusetts
- Hosted on Zoom by GBH Forum Network
Jia Lynn Yang, New York Times National Editor and author of the award-winning One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965, will moderate this discussion about how Chinese migration to the world’s goldfields upended global power and economics and forged modern conceptions of race.
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| Mae Ngai (Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan) |
In roughly five decades, between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and nations. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia, and South Africa catalyzed a global battle over “the Chinese Question”: would the United States and the British Empire outlaw Chinese immigration? Drawing on ten years of research across five continents, prize-winning historian Mae Ngai masterfully links important themes in world history and economics, from Europe’s subjugation of China to the rise of the international gold standard and the invention of racist, anti-Chinese stereotypes that persist to this day.
Mae Ngai is the Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History at Columbia University. She is the author of the award-winning Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America and The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America. She lives in New York City and Accokeek, Maryland.
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| Jia Lynn Yang (Photo credit: Lorin Klaris) |
Jia Lynn Yang, the national editor at The New York Times, was previously deputy national security editor at The Washington Post, where she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Trump and Russia. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
If you’d like to purchase The Chinese Question from Porter Square Books, please visit the following link:
And be sure to check out other upcoming events hosted by our partners!
- https://www.bpl.org/author-talk-series-at-the-central-library/
- https://www.americanancestors.org/american-inspiration-author-series
- https://bostonbookfest.org/festival/schedule/
- https://www.wgbh.org/events
Author Talks Committee
State Library of Massachusetts
