Paper Son

"Having read a number of autobiographies and biographies of Asian American that came before me, Paper Son reaffirms the notion that we are lucky to have not gone through what they had experienced. At this time when [the Asian American Curriculum Project] is trying to promote new Asian Pacific American poets and their writings, it's good to be featuring a book on one of our community's pioneering poets" Asian American Books newsletter "This rare, engaging, and often poignant firsthand chronicle of Chin's efforts to create a life for himself in the US while supporting his family in China effectively demonstrates how the continual fear of being exposed as a "paper son" and the changing social, international, and political developments from the 1930s through the 1950s fundamentally shaped Chin's opportunities and experiences. ...this clearly written and accessible autobiography constitutes a rich resource for faculty and students interested in US social history and immigration as well as Asian American studies, and is highly recommended for libraries developing comprehensive Asian American studies collection, or diversifying their collections in US social history, immigration, and labor." --Choice "What a stunning book! Mr. Tung Pok Chin was a self-taught poet philosopher steeped in the Laundries and restaurants of Boston and New York City during the nightmarish years of the Chinese exclusion and McCarthy red-baiting. He writes with a penetrating insight that transports the reader into the working lives of isolated men trying their best to survive a hostile racist world while somehow saving pennies to support their loved ones still in Guangdong. This is far more than the story of one man: he is writing the truth of generations of paper sons and paper daughters." --Professor John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York University, and co-founder of the Museum of Chinese in the Americas "For scholars and students, Paper Son is valuable because it documents a life during an era that is perhaps the least studies in Chinese American History, the 1930s through the mid-1970s...Chin's account not only reveals the details and strategy of how he conducted his 'paper life'; it also puts human flesh to our skeletal knowledge of how papers sons lived their day-to-day lives during the Great Depression, World War II, and the McCarthy Era... Chin's memoir relates this information in a manner that is immediately accessible, warm, reflective, human, and insightful. No doubt his writing style reveals a great deal about his personality, but it also reminds us that much of our history of the exclusion era is faceless." --K. Scott Wong, from the Introduction