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Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years Kindle Edition

5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 3 ratings

During the Cold War, Chinese Americans struggled to gain political influence in the United States. Considered potentially sympathetic to communism, their communities attracted substantial public and government scrutiny, particularly in San Francisco and New York.

Between Mao and McCarthy looks at the divergent ways that Chinese Americans in these two cities balanced domestic and international pressures during the tense Cold War era. On both coasts, Chinese Americans sought to gain political power and defend their civil rights, yet only the San Franciscans succeeded. Forging multiracial coalitions and encouraging voting and moderate activism, they avoided the deep divisions and factionalism that consumed their counterparts in New York. Drawing on extensive research in both Chinese- and English-language sources, Charlotte Brooks uncovers the complex, diverse, and surprisingly vibrant politics of an ethnic group trying to find its voice and flex its political muscle in Cold War America.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Between Mao and McCarthy is an enlightening and engaging political history of Chinese Americans from the Depression Era to the Civil Rights Movement. Brooks’s comfort and ease in moving back and forth between languages makes for an especially compelling narrative, as she deftly unearths the moments when newspapers, advertisements, or historical actors purposely provided divergent messages or translations. She culls evidence from archives as variegated and far-flung as the Bancroft Library, the British Foreign Office on China, Congressional records, the Kennedy and Truman Libraries, the Hoover Institution, and various community association holdings. The reader is rarely left wondering whether or not the author may have missed an unturned stone here or there.” -- Matthew Briones ― University of Chicago

“With the support of extensive and prodigious research, Brooks has written a path-breaking book that articulately explores the complicated relationship between, on the one hand, changing racial politics in general and the experience of Chinese-American communities in particular in the 1950s and 1960s and, on the other, the deeply politicized pressures of the Cold War environment. 
Between Mao and McCarthy is highly revealing and, therefore, highly recommended.” -- Chen Jian ― Cornell University

“Brooks continues her examination of transnationalism and Asian America with this impressive study of the interaction between China and Chinese-American politics. In this work, she considers how Chinese Americans came to shift their attention from China to the US, gradually shedding their psychological dependence on their ancestral country. . . . This book expands the understanding of transnationalism while also delivering another blow to the myth that Asian Americans were politically passive prior to the 1960s. Recommended.” ―
Choice

Between Mao and McCarthy opens new ground in the study of Chinese American politics. Recovering a lost history with contemporary significance, Brooks’s energetically researched study returns a host of once prominent personalities and organizations to their place as political pioneers. Chinese American politics were at the same time local, national, and international, as well as ethnic, ideological, and partisan. Brooks’s richly textured account is an original and important contribution.” -- Gordon Chang ― Stanford University

“Drawing upon prodigious research,
Between Mao and McCarthy remakes the possibilities of Chinese American civic participation and pushes back to the 1930s the kinds of political activism and claims once associated only with the civil rights movement. An impressively nuanced account of a complex and perplexing era.” -- Madeline Y. Hsu ― University of Texas at Austin

Between Mao and McCarthy is an impressive scholarly tome on the evolution of Chinese American politics in the years after World War II. . . . Brooks’ inclusion of the prominent voices in community newspapers and her detailed information about the power players within New York and San Francisco lend an insider’s view on a turbulent time for Chinese American communities. . . Well worth a read.” ― 8Asians

“With sharp focus on the Chinese American communities in San Francisco and New York City,
Between Mao and McCarthy presents an insightful investigation on the transfor­mation of Chinese American politics in the mid-twentieth century. . . . Brooks’s examination of the transforma­tion of Chinese American politics is provoca­tive and pathbreaking. . . . It shines brilliantly as a major addition to the study of Chinese American politics during the Cold War.” ― Journal of American History

About the Author

Charlotte Brooks is associate professor of history at Baruch College, City University of New York. She is the author of Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00RM5K646
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The University of Chicago Press (January 7, 2015)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 7, 2015
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 12.6 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 489 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 3 ratings

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Charlotte Brooks
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2018
    Congratulations to Professor Charlotte Brooks for writing an erudite and approachable history of Chinese American politics from the 1930’s to the 1960’s. The author’s writing style in Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years is straightforward and easily understood. She avoids complex sentences and jargon.

    Prof. Brooks cogently explains how international, national and local events shaped the social and political experiences of Chinese Americans. She compares and contrasts those effects in the two largest China-born and native-born communities of San Francisco and New York City. The community in San Francisco began earlier and was larger than in New York resulting in more native-born citizens. In San Francisco the native-born assumed control of community organizations from the China-born earlier, turned from China based politics and Kuomintang control sooner, and engaged in local, statewide and national politics more effectively than in New York. Prof. Brooks presents the personalities and documents their actions in detail. However, she also clearly presents the social, economic and political background. She describes the Chinese Exclusion Act, the changing attitudes toward Chinese Americans during World War II, the Chinese Civil War, the Vietnam War and the Cold War, the 1956 “Immigration Racket” investigation, and the influence of black civil rights activism.

    I read the book as a Chinese American who grew through adolescence in San Francisco. I was largely unaware of the complexities of Chinese American politics. My family moved away from San Francisco’s Chinatown to the western neighborhoods, and emphasized assimilation over local politics. However, being ignorant of political forces does not make you immune to their effects. I strongly recommend Prof. Brook’s book to Chinese Americans who want to understand their history and to others who are interested in how a minority reacted to stresses and opportunities and developed political awareness and identity.
  • Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2015
    For anyone who thinks the phrases "Chinese-Americans" and "political activism" are oxymorons, read "Between Mao and McCarthy." A book has long been needed on the subject of politics within the Chinese-American community. Charlotte Brooks' meticulously-researched "Between Mao and McCarthy" goes a long way towards filling the gap. Though the book's focus is the Cold War era, its range is much greater, giving a broad overview of the major issues confronting Chinese in the United States starting with the 1882 Exclusion Act. One of the most important accomplishments of this book is explaining how the question of Chinese-Americans' relationship to the U.S. has always been complicated by their Chinese ancestry. Why is it that Americans of Chinese descent are never considered a true--read "loyal"--citizens no matter how many generations they have been Americans?

    By comparing how differently Chinese-American political activism evolved in New York and San Francisco, Brooks adroitly illuminates her larger points. Why is it that New York claims less than a handful of Chinese-Americans in political office and only in the last several years, while San Francisco's Chinese have long been represented in local and national politics? Among other reasons, as Brooks methodically explains, New York had always been dominated by elite Chinese with ties to the Nationalist government first in China and later in Taiwan and the Nationalists' powerful American supporters while Chinese-American activism on the West Coast had evolved more organically and on a grass-roots level.

    Of particular relevance to today is Brooks' thorough research into the American government's harassment and persecution of left-leaning Chinese-Americans during the McCarthy era when the FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service (now absorbed into the Homeland Security department) withdrew or threatened to withdraw American citizenship from Chinese guilty of nothing more than gathering to discuss their common interest in a newly-invigorated China.

    "Between Mao and McCarthy"more than ably explicates a long-neglected piece of American social and political history.
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