The first Chinese American
Subtitle: the remarkable life of Wong Chin Foo
By: Scott D. Seligman
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 364
ISBN-13: 9789888139897; 9789888139903
Subjects: Immigrants in mass media; Chinese Americans; Chinese American journalists; Immigrants; Biography; Civil rights workers
Other titles: Remarkable life of Wong Chin Foo
Description: "Chinese in America endured abuse and discrimination in the late nineteenth century, but they had a leader and a fighter in Wong Chin Foo (1847-1898), whose story is a forgotten chapter in the struggle for equal rights in America. The first to use the term "Chinese American," Wong defended his compatriots against malicious scapegoating and urged them to become Americanized to win their rights. A trailblazer and a born showman who proclaimed himself China's first Confucian missionary to the United States, he founded America's first association of Chinese voters and testified before Congress to get laws that denied them citizenship repealed. Wong challenged Americans to live up to the principles they freely espoused but failed to apply to the Chinese in their midst. This evocative biography is the first book-length account of the life and times of one of America's most famous Chinese--and one of its earliest campaigners for racial equality."--Publisher's website.
Notes: Includes chronology (pages [xxi]-xxvi); dramatis personae (pages [xxvii]-xxxii); and glossary and gazetteer (pages [341]-345).

Includes bibliographic references (pages 347-355) and index.
Table of contents: title: The Arid land of Heathenism (1847-67); title: An abbreviated American education (1868-70); title: The timber from which conspirators are made (1871-72); title: Soiled doves (1873-74); title: A hare-brained, half-crazy man (1873-74); title: America's first Confucian missionary (1874); title: A most delightful dish of chow chow (1875-79); title: A terror to the Chinese community (1879-82); title: The Chinese American (1883); title: Wiping out the stain (1883-85); title: I shall drive him back to his sand lots (1883); title: Pigtails in politics (1884-86); title: Chop Suey (1884-86); title: Why am I a heathen? (1887); title: Fifty cents a pound (1887); title: The Chinese in New York (1887-89); title: I have always been a republican (1888-89); title: I'll cut your head off if you write such things (1888-91); title: The only New Yorker without a country (1891); title: The Chinese equal rights league (1892); title: Is it then a crime to be a chinaman? (1893); title: An ardent worker for justice (1893); title: False starts (1894-95); title: The American liberty party (1896); title: A letter from my friends in America (1894-97); title: Citizenship for Americanized Chinese (1897); title: When the world came to Omaha (1897-98); title: I do not like Chinese ways, nor chinamen any more (1898).