Chinatown, Honolulu : place, race, and empire /

Chinatown, Honolulu : place, race, and empire /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Riley, Nancy E., 1955- author.
Imprint:	New York : Columbia University Press, [2024]
Description:	viii, 272 pages ; 23 cm
Language:	English
Subject:	Chinese Americans -- Hawaii -- Honolulu -- History. Chinese Americans -- Hawaii -- Honolulu -- Social conditions. Chinatown (Honolulu, Hawaii) -- History. Honolulu (Hawaii) -- Race relations -- History.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/13497764

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9780231196789 0231196784 9780231196796 0231196792 9780231551823
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
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"--

Description
Summary:	The Chinese experience in Hawai'i has long been told as a story of inclusion and success. During the Cold War, the United States touted the Chinese community in Hawai'i as an example of racial harmony and American opportunity, claiming that all ethnic groups had the possibility to attain middle-class lives. Today, Honolulu's Chinatown is not only a destination for tourism and consumption but also a celebration of Chinese accomplishments, memorializing past discrimination and present prominence within a framework of multiculturalism. This narrative, however, conceals many other histories and processes that played crucial roles in shaping Chinatown.<br> <br> This book offers a critical account of the history of Chinese in Hawai'i from the mid-nineteenth century to the present in this context of U.S. empire, settler colonialism, and racialization. Nancy E. Riley foregrounds elements that are often left out of narratives of Chinese history in Hawai'i, particularly the place of Native Hawaiians, geopolitics and U.S. empire building, and the ongoing construction of race and whiteness. Tracing how Chinatown became a site of historical remembrance, she argues that it is also used to reinforce the ideology of neoliberal multiculturalism, which upholds racial hierarchy by lauding certain ethnic groups while excluding others. An insightful and in-depth analysis of the story of Honolulu's Chinatown, this book offers new perspectives on the making of the racial landscape of Hawai'i and the United States more broadly.
Physical Description:	viii, 272 pages ; 23 cm
Bibliography:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:	9780231196789 0231196784 9780231196796 0231196792 9780231551823