Strangers in the Land - Large Print by Michael Luo (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From New Yorker editor and writer Michael Luo, a vivid, urgent history of two centuries of Chinese exclusion and the birth of anti-Asian feeling in America.

In 1889, when the Supreme Court upheld the Chinese Exclusion Act--a measure barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States that remained in effect for more than fifty years--Justice Stephen Johnson Field characterized the Chinese as a people "residing apart by themselves." They were, Field concluded, "strangers in the land." Today, there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States, yet this label still hovers over Asian Americans.

In Strangers in the Land, Luo traces anti-Asian feeling in America to the first wave of immigrants from China in the mid-nineteenth-century: laborers who traveled to California in search of gold and railroad work. Their communities almost immediately faced mobs of white vigilantes who drove them from their workplaces and homes. In his rich, character-driven history, Luo tells stories like that of Denis Kearney, the sandlot demagogue who became the face of the anti-Chinese movement, and of activists who fought back, like Massachusetts Senator George Frisbie Hoar and newspaperman Wong Chin Foo.

After the halt on immigration in 1889, the Chinese-American community who remained struggled to survive and thrive on the margins of American life. In 1965, when LBJ's Immigration and Nationality Act forbade discrimination by national origin, America opened its doors wide to families like those of Luo's parents, but he finds that the centuries of exclusion of Chinese-Americans left a legacy: many Asians are still treated, and feel, like outsiders today.

Strangers in the Land is a sweeping narrative of a forgotten chapter in American history, and a reminder that America's present reflects its exclusionary past.

Review Quotes

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 (Time)

A NEW YORK TIMES NONFICTION BOOK TO READ THIS SPRING

"You can't paint a complete picture of America without [the story of Chinese Americans], and the New Yorker journalist Michael Luo tells it persuasively in Strangers in the Land, a granular account of Chinese migration to the United States. In an evenhanded style that yields neither a woke polemic nor a sanitized past, he traces the lives of immigrants to a country that actively drew them in and then tried to push them out. . . [The book] succeeds through its little biographies of individuals - a range of quirky and fascinating figures, both Chinese and white, who drive the narrative. . . [and offer] a view on the full complexity of American immigration." --The New York Times Book Review

"In Strangers in the Land, Michael Luo has written a sweeping history that somehow feels intimate, a narrative of irrational bigotry and legal violence that somehow shines with hope. In a moment of anti-immigrant fever, this work arrives like a balm." --Boston Globe

"Giv[es] voice to the first Asian Americans. . . Narrative history[ies] of the Chinese experience in America [are], of course, legion. . . What distinguishes [Strangers in the Land] from the others, however, is that Luo's book, though sweeping in scope, is also microscopic when it comes to stories. . . Readers interested in American history, not only Chinese American history, will savor these pages. An estimable and vital work of history that honors the Chinese American experience." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A remarkable book. . . . Michael Luo. . . has taken a subject that most people of Chinese descent, like me, are aware of in a vaguely ominous way and turned it into a terrifying yet compelling narrative." --Bloomberg

"Sweeping. . . Amid the current paroxysms concerning immigration, diversity, and race, his history of earlier, often dismaying, confrontations and crises could not be more important." --Harvard Magazine

"This book is a gift to anyone interested in American history. I learned something on every page. And I couldn't stop turning pages. Michael Luo has somehow synthesized two hundred years of history into a compelling narrative that manages to be comprehensive, illuminating, and deeply moving. I'll treasure this work and return to it often and I imagine many others will, too." --Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown, winner of the National Book Award

"This book is an astonishing feat of urgent history. Michael Luo has unearthed a buried chapter of America's rise, in which Chinese immigrants fought their way through violence and scapegoating to build the nation's future. But he illuminates much more than the past; Strangers in the Land reimagines how the idea of Asia reverberates in American culture today, pulled between belonging, rejection, success, and suspicion. A powerful new entry in the canon on American identity." --Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, winner of the National Book Award

"Strangers in the Land is what history should be--richly detailed, authoritative, and compelling. Luo pieces together the stunning and shocking story of a people's journey to this country, and in the process reveals an essential part of the story of America." --David Grann, New York Times-bestselling author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon

"An epic of both the best and worst aspects of the American experiment, Strangers in the Land is a work of history that is deeply researched, deftly written, and highly relevant today. In the vivid, often heartbreaking, and ultimately inspiring experiences of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans, Luo finds a deeper story about aspiration and belonging that is as universal as it is profound." --Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times-bestselling author of Say Nothing

"This is not the story of a people being hated. This is the moving story of a people's persistence and resistance -- how individuals, families, and changing communities looked hard at rejection, endured violence, consumed daily bitterness, and yet sought the higher purposes of humanity and better lives. With profound feeling, clear narrative, and unyielding hope for a greater understanding, Michael Luo has written a definitive biography of the first Asians in America. Luo's book serves as a witness of how powerful the love and aspirations of immigrants make real the most beautiful promises of a new homeland." --Min Jin Lee, New York Times-bestselling author of Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko

"In Strangers in the Land, Michael Luo shines a bright light on the unwavering patriotism and determination that is the Chinese American legacy. By unearthing in intimate, empathic details US immigration law's roots in Chinese exclusion, Luo writes into the record what history books and courses have long buried but what every Chinese American feels in their bones. This book has enriched my understanding of American law, of Asian American identity, and of my own sense of self. I cannot think of a human being who would not be bettered by reading this canonical work. Strangers in the Land is powerful, essential reading for us all." --Qian Julie Wang, New York Times-bestselling author of Beautiful Country

"Tracing echoes of today's debates around immigration and exclusion to the past, Luo's vividly told, carefully researched, and deeply compassionate book is an essential contribution to the continually unfolding story of the Chinese in America." --Hua Hsu, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Stay True

"Impressively researched and beautifully told, Strangers in the Land offers a new and much-needed history of a people and community that have always been central to the American story." --Erika Lee, Bae Family Professor of History, Harvard University, and author of The Making of Asian America: A History

"The violent, terrible history of Chinese exclusion and xenophobia is told with feeling and expansive research. Michael Luo's excellent recovery of this vital story is critical in this difficult time." --Gordon H. Chang, Professor, Department of History and Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities, Stanford University, and author of Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad

"Michael Luo's new history of the Chinese in the U.S. is a book for our time, when anti-Chinese sentiment has again gripped American politics. In Luo's masterful account, Chinese emigrants' and Chinese Americans' stories and voices are front and center. They encountered and resisted racist harassment, violence, and laws from the California gold rush to today's new gilded age. Shaping Chinese American communities and America at large, it is a story told with sensitivity and renewed urgency." --Mae M. Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History, Columbia University, and author of The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics

About the Author

MICHAEL LUO is the editor of newyorker.com and writes regularly for the magazine on politics, media, and religion. He joined The New Yorker in 2016 as an investigations editor. Before that, he spent thirteen years at The New York Times, where he led a team of investigative reporters and was an editor on the newspaper's race team. He is a recipient of a George Polk Award and a Livingston Award for Young Journalists. He is the son of Chinese-American immigrants.