猫咪社区

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When Linda Sue Park was growing up in Illinois, she spent hours at her local library, devouring Laura Ingalls Wilder鈥檚 Little House on the Prairie series.

Park, 61, is and the daughter of Korean immigrants. As a child, she imagined going on adventures with Wilder鈥檚 central character, Laura. She indulged in daydreams of sitting by the fireplace with the Ingalls family, White homesteaders whose experiences are beloved by generations of American readers.

鈥淚鈥檝e spoken to many children of immigrants who really latched onto these books,鈥� Park says. 鈥淚 have this theory that we were searching so desperately for a road map on how to be American.鈥�

As a Korean American kid growing up in Colorado in the 1990s, I, too, was a fan of the Little House series, and I was fascinated by the lore of the Old West. When my sixth-grade class visited an historic hotel in southern Colorado, a tour guide pointed at bullet holes dotting the ceiling鈥攅vidence, he said, of bandit-style brawls. I was hooked.

The characters who inhabited the Old West drew me in with their boisterous attitudes, wild independence, and refusal to conform to societal expectations. But in all of the stories I encountered, I never once came across Asian American people. I didn鈥檛 see them in history books, on tours, or on plaques. 

Chinese people were present鈥攁nd prolific鈥攊n the Old West.

It turns out they were there all along. I just didn鈥檛 know their stories.

At age 16, I read Killing Custer, by Native writer James Welch, who Gen. George Armstrong Custer. The book introduced me to a tradition of historians working to correct the myth of the whitewashed American West. In time, my imaginings of the Old West expanded to include the Black, Latinx, and Asian American people who lived here, too鈥攁nd who, like Whites, were settling on lands taken from Indigenous people.

鈥淎sian Americans lived in the West,鈥� Professor Gail M. Nomura. 鈥淭hey shaped the western landscape through cultivation and toil. They were not just excluded. They were not just passive victims to be conquered and subjugated. They built and they molded and they struggled.鈥�

Though their presence has been written out of the record, nearly 15,000 Chinese men , an estimated 150 to 2,000 workers . But none of them were invited to pose for the iconic .

Chinese people were present鈥攁nd prolific鈥攊n the Old West. 鈥淚n 1870, almost 30% of the Idaho territory鈥檚 population were Chinese,鈥� says Liping Zhu, 63, a professor of history at Eastern Washington University, in Cheney, Washington.

Chinese American communities faced great hostility and racial violence in the late 1800s. After the transcontinental railroad was completed, thousands of Chinese Americans moved to Truckee, California, in search of work. Within a few months, White townspeople set Chinatown on fire. A local Causasian League plotted to drive out all Chinese residents. In 1871, White residents of Los Angeles . In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred all Chinese laborers from immigrating to the U.S.

Zhu鈥檚 career spans several decades, uncovering the presence of Asian Americans in the Old West, shedding light on how they lived, and how their legacies have shaped our new understanding of an Asian American Old West. His scholarship challenges us to look past the stereotype that Chinese Americans were merely passive victims in the face of adversity. They also built lives for themselves.

His research has uncovered court . Chinese Americans operated laundries in Western mining towns, allowing them to gain economic mobility: Their profits often exceeded a standard 19th century wage of $1.50 per day.

鈥淟aundry men could make up to $10 a day,鈥� says Zhu. 鈥淭hey were 鈥榤ining the miners.鈥欌��

which cites Zhu鈥檚 research, suggests the importance of Chinese businessmen in Deadwood, South Dakota. In 1800, the town of 5,000 was home to 鈥渢wo prominent merchants, Hi Kee and Fee Lee Wong,鈥� who were 鈥渉ighly respected and well-known by the entire community.鈥�

Archaeological excavations in Deadwood thriving intercultural relationships between White customers and Chinese businesses, from restaurants and gaming halls to opium houses and practitioners of Chinese medicine. White Deadwoodians attended Chinese funerals and cultural celebrations. Chinese Deadwoodians attended Fourth of July picnics.

These encounters weren鈥檛 necessarily a mark of assimilation, Zhu says, choosing to use the term 鈥渃ultural fusion鈥� instead. Cultural practice sharing went both ways.

By 1900, the Chinese population of Deadwood had dwindled to less than 90 people. But Zhu still keeps in touch with their descendants. 鈥淚 don’t call myself a revisionist historian,鈥� he says. He studies history鈥攈istory that鈥檚 always been there.

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Linda Sue Park didn鈥檛 set out to write a book about Asian Americans in the Old West. But more than 50 years after she first picked up the Little House series, she published : a middle-grade story about an Asian American girl growing up in Dakota Territory in the late 1800s.

Hanna, the main character in Prairie Lotus, is the daughter of a woman who immigrated to the U.S. from China and a White American man. She arrives in the fictional town of La Forge with dreams of attending school and becoming a dressmaker.

Things aren鈥檛 easy for Hanna. She endures constant racism and xenophobia, experiences drawn from Park鈥檚 own life. But Hanna鈥檚 life isn鈥檛 just about the racism she endures. Some of my favorite passages dive into her passion for garment-making.

Asian hate is not new. It鈥檚 been around for a long time. We’re just talking about it now.

鈥淚 wanted to give a little bit of a twist to the Asian laundry. I wanted to take that stereotype and work with it, but at the same time subvert it,鈥� says Park, who comes from a family of accomplished needlewomen.

In a particularly multilayered twist, we learn that Hanna鈥檚 late mother鈥攂orn in China and brought to the United States by Christian missionaries鈥攚as half Chinese and half Korean. It was Park鈥檚 way of writing Koreanness into the story long before substantial numbers of Koreans immigrated to the U.S.

Park thought a great deal about how to incorporate Native characters into the story, and she places Hanna in the context of a land that was stolen from Indigenous Ihanktonwan people. In the first few pages of the book, Hanna encounters Ihanktonwan women. These scenes were Park鈥檚 attempts in imagining what encounters with Indigenous people might have been like for a young girl on the American frontier.

In the wake of the , after a year of , Park has noticed a renewed interest in her books.

鈥淎sian hate is not new. It鈥檚 been around for a long time. We’re just talking about it now,鈥� she says. Park says she wants Prairie Lotus to be a resource for young readers about Asian American history鈥攖he good and the bad.

Park鈥檚 first book, Seesaw Girl, was published in 1999. 22 years later, she鈥檚 published 28 books, created and is an active member of the nonprofit . But she looks forward to the days when even more Asian American writers publish stories about Asian Americans in the Old West and beyond.

鈥淭here’s a lot more space for these stories, but I get so impatient. I don’t want three books. I want 300 and I want them now.鈥� To Asian American authors, she says, 鈥淧lease hurry up.鈥�