American Chinatown

"A wonderfully revealing and compassionate trip into the real lives of men and women who straddle the world’s two great powers” (The New Yorker) this inside look at the Chinatowns in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Honolulu, and Las Vegas “captures the essence of each by telling the stories of its people” (Contra Costa Times).
Where in America can you visit another country without needing a passport? Chinatown, USA: a world within a world and a state of mind.
In American Chinatown, acclaimed travel writer Bonnie Tsui takes an affectionate and attentive look at the neighborhood that has bewitched her since childhood, when she would eagerly await her grandfather’s return from the fortune cookie factory. By interweaving her own personal impressions with the experiences of those living in Chinatowns all across the United States today, Tsui beautifully captures its vivid stories, giving readers a deeper look into what Chinatown means to its inhabitants—and to America at large.

Bonnie Tsui is a longtime contributor to The New York Times and California Sunday Magazine. She has been the recipient of the Jane Rainie Opel Young Alumna Award from Harvard University, the Lowell Thomas Gold Award, and a National Press Foundation Fellowship. American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods, won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and Best of 2009 Notable Bay Area Books selection. Her website is BonnieTsui.com.