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Chinese Laborers Degrading Start

By: Saint Twenty August 19, 2024August 27, 2024

Saint MuseBlack Cake, Books, Charmaine Wilkerson, Chinese American, Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese Models, Simu Liu, This Is America, TwitterLeave a Comment

“His ba liked to tell his boys the story of how some of their people took their degrading start in the Americas and turned it on its head. Back in 1854, he told them, some of the men working on the Panama railroad got so sick they vomited a blackish bile and their eyes turned yellow. Many of the Chinese laborers who’d been brought over to work on the railroad project demanded to be sent away to a safer place. Some of them ended up on the island. Already weakened by hard labor and illness, few of them would survive for long. One of those who did make it went on to open a wholesale supply store, setting a precedent that encouraged other Chinese immigrants to do the same.”

-Black Cake

Via: Twitter

Becoming A Shade Too Yellow

By: Saint Twenty June 23, 2021June 23, 2021

Saint MuseAsian American, Asian Artists, Asian Reads, Becoming A Shade Too Yellow, Celete Ng, Chinese American, Everything I Never Told You, Hi Sue YunLeave a Comment

He had never felt he belonged here, even though he’d been born on American soil, even though he had never set foot anywhere else. His father had come to California under a false name, pretending to be the son of a neighbor who had emigrated there some years earlier. America was a melting pot, but Congress, terrified that the molten mixture was becoming a shade too yellow, had banned all immigrants from China. Only the children of those already in the States could enter. So James’s father had taken the name of his neighbor’s son, who had drowned in the river the year before, and come to join his “father” in San Francisco. It was the story of nearly every Chinese immigrant from the time of Chester A. Arthur to the end of the Second World War. While the Irish and the Germans and the Swedes crowded onto steamship decks, waving as the pale green torch of the Statue of Liberty came into view, the coolies had to find other means to reach the land where all men were created equal.

Artist: Hi Sue Yun