From award-winning author Peter Kwong and Dušanka Miščević comes a definitive portrait of Chinese Americans, one of the oldest immigrant groups and fastest-growing communities in the United States. Beginning with stories of Chinese frontiersmen who came to the West Coast by the thousands in the mid-nineteenth century and continuing to the high-tech transnationals who have helped spark the development of today’s booming Chinese American “ethnoburbs,” this engrossing narrative recounts stories of extraordinary hardship, discrimination, and success.

Chinese America is a landmark analysis that draws on firsthand reporting in Asia and the U.S. Offering a new picture of the country’s development, Kwong and Miščević provide the first comprehensive report on the suburban immigrant communities that are transforming America. Urban ghettos continue to host some of the country’s poorest immigrants, but Chinese Americans now live in the suburbs in similar proportions to whites—and have brought with them Chinese supermarket chains, language schools, and growing clout in America and Asia. Exploring the burgeoning trade—and underlying conflicts—between China and the U.S., Chinese America reveals the complex connections between immigration, globalization, and foreign policy in our time.