-- Booklist

Hailed by the Philadelphia Inquirer as "a must-read," Forbidden Workers tells for the first time the full story of recent Chinese immigration to this country. Widely praised from the Wall Street Journal to Asian Week, the book uses the Chinese experience to shed light on broader issues of immigration from countries around the world. Author Peter Kwong has interviewed countless immigrant workers, activists, Chinatown powerbrokers, and "snakeheads" (smugglers who bring immigrants to the United States) and has traveled to China to talk with families of immigrants. The result is an unprecedented look at an invisible community within American society -- and at a billion-dollar industry whose commodity is workers who labor under conditions approaching modern slavery.

Peter Kwong is chair of the Asian American Studies Program at Hunter College in New York and author of The New Chinatown. He has written on immigration issues for the Village Voice and The Nation.