Samfow = Chin-Shan San-Pu: The San Joaquin Chinese Legacy

by Sylvia Sun Minnick

Book Overview

The book is a revealing portrait of the Chinese émigrés of western America, a people laughing, crying, fighting and loving in the Chinatown community of Stockton, California, the gateway to the Mother... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0944194095
• ISBN13: 9780944194096
• Release Date: November 1987
• Publisher: Panorama West Books
• Length: 322 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

This should be included in California history curriculum

I found this book highly informative. I have been trying to research my family and learned that my great-grandfather helped to build the railroads and census records show that my great-grandmother was born in California. This made me go back and read "Samfow: The San Joaquin Chinese Legacy," a book I purchased 8 years before in Stockton where I had grown up (but thankfully not born in). After reading this book, I understand the significance of Stockton for immigrating Chinese. I can also understand why some of my relatives never spoke of their earlier experiences in this country, especially those that immigrated here. I had not realized how many restrictions were placed upon this one ethnic group and not on others and how they were treated as less than human. Now I also understand why some relatives had to resort to whatever means they could to gain residence here and some were quite humorous. They weren't even allowed to become naturalized citizens until the repeal of the exclusion act in 1943 and only because China became a US ally during WWII. This book has opened my eyes to many of the many revered and upstanding citizens of San Joaquin County, for whom buildings and parks have been named after. Many of them participated heavily in the Anti-Chinese campaigns which sought to expel all Chinese from the area through boycotts which entailed fines or jail time if violated or through violent means. I am amazed at how much "dirty history" is kept hidden from the history books. One such example is Laura de Force-Gordon (1838-1907), one of the first women admitted to the California Bar and a staunch suffragette. She spearheaded the Non Partisan Anti-Chinese League movement in San Joaquin county in 1886. There is no mention of this in her biographies. This book is highly enlightening and has given more information to continue my genealogical search. Chinese were required to carry certificates of residence as a result of the Geary Act of 1892 and this yields yet another source of information to research. I hadn't read this book before because I had expected to read of individual accounts of experiences, especially those that might tell of individual, family or group contributions to San Joaquin county. Perhaps her next book will because there are so many stories to tell and be heard from the old-timers of Stockton before the stories die with them.