| Summary: | "When Honolulu's Chinatown was constructed it was as an ethnic ghetto for a marginalized immigrant population. The numbers of ethnic Chinese living in Honolulu have increased since the 1930s while Chinatown's population has steadily decreased. Chinatown remains a significant focal point for the community as a symbol of Chinese history in Hawai'i as a reminder of political and economic progress. Yet as with all things involving race and ethnicity in the United States, the story is more complicated. In Chinatown, Honolulu, Nancy E. Riley argues that the history of Honolulu's Chinatown reflects the dynamics of American empire, race hierarchies, and power. It is about the process of racialization, how groups arrive at their place in a racial hierarchy, how the hierarchy changes over time, and the role that colonial power play in setting the stage for all that follows. To tell this story, Riley relies on a variety of data sources including participant observations in and around Chinatown, interviews with local government officials and with residents, US Census and survey data, primary archives including those housed at the Hawai'i Chinese History Center, and local newspapers and magazines. Chinatown, Honolulu's chapters cover Chinatown's origins in the 1890s when Chinese were moving from the plantations to the city, the pre-WWII era when Chinatown was a Chinese ghetto rebuilt after a fire started by the Board of Health, the post WWII era as Chinese climbed the educational and occupational ladder and moved out of Chinatown, the 1970s and 1980s when the fight began to preserve the district's history, and ending with its present as a site of upscale culture and consumption. Throughout it considers that changing way that ethnic Chinese have existed in the specific racial landscape of Hawai'i inclusive of Haoles and native Hawaiians"--
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