John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Racial Law

The story of the Chinese in America is a history of erasure via a complex series of legal restraints, argues Princeton history professor Lew-Williams (The Chinese Must Go) in this penetrating account. Over the course of the 19th century, she explains, white officials “passed more than five thousand laws that marginalized and controlled Chinese people.” These statutes were enforced by “eclectic groups of sheriffs, policemen, tax collectors, judges, missionaries, teachers, realtors, and public health officials,” whose archival records Lew-Williams scours to piece together the lives of people so despised they were not accorded personal identities, but were logged as “John Doe Chinaman” or “Mary Chinaman.” Lew-Williams structures her findings in a compulsively readable format, organizing the stories she uncovers into chapters interrogating stereotypes and common myths of the “wily Chinamen” and the threats they posed; revealing an in-depth view of daily life in the American West, especially for Chinese women and girls; and deconstructing how these restrictive laws were part of a white supremacist “racial regime” targeting cultural practices linked to Chinese residents (like carrying baskets on poles or playing gongs in theatrical productions). Lew-Williams cogently argues that the “racial etiquette” enforced by these laws has a lingering effect today, as Asian Americans continue to feel pressure to “discreetly regulate themselves.” It’s a vital and painstakingly constructed window into an intentionally obscured part of American history. (Sept.)