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The First Chinese Americanby: Scott D. Seligman
Hong Kong :
Hong Kong University Press 2013, Hardbound
ISBN: 978-988-8139-90-3
Reviewed by: Jacqueline M. Newman
Summer Volume: 2019 Issue: 26(2) page(s): 25
 Subtitled: The
Remarkable Life of
Wong Chin Foo, John
KW Tchen says on the
rear cover, that Wong
is “the earliest most
visible Chinese public
advocate who speaks
and writes in English
about the rights of his
countrymen.” In the
Journal of Chinese Studies it says “we owe Seligman
a debt of gratitude for rescuing Wong Chin Foo from
anonymity...unearthing massive documents from the
dustbin of history”.
From Renqiu Yu, a professor at Purchase College, Seligman
gets credit for this “brilliant narrative of the colorful
story of a man of unusual energy and resilience...in
Chinese America.” To Peter Gordon of The Asian Review
of Books, we read it is “evocative history of a post-Civil-
War America, .....(and) an in-depth introduction to the
Chinese struggle for equal rights”. This remarkable volume is about the life of Wong Chin
Foo in twenty-eight detailed chapters. It begins with
From The Arid Land of Heathenism (1847 - 67) to the last
titled: I Do Not Like Chinese Ways, Nor Chinamen Any
More (1898). After them, an eight-page Afterword. There are thirty-six pages of Foo’s published items from
newspapers, Glossaries and Gazetterers, a nine-page
Bibliography, and eight two-column Index pages about
this remarkable Chinese American, maps, b/w pictures
of family, places, and other people, and on the back
cover, a picture of Foo with his long braided queue,
about his parents, that he wanted to bring his own son to
the US, and about his family, daily life, businesses, places
he lectured, the Chinese Equal Rights League of 1892,
his work for justice for all Chinese, and more biography
about this Chinese-American chap in the US. |
