China Men Review

China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston (320 pages)
Date Finished: 31 May 2015
My Rating: 4 stars
Synopsis:
The author chronicles the lives of three generations of Chinese men in America, woven from memory, myth and fact. Here’s a storyteller’s tale of what they endured in a strange new land. 
Review:
This book was very interesting to read. As a memoir, it was great to be able to see into the author and her family’s life. I had to read this book for one of my college courses and it has been very eye-opening to see what these people had to go through, not through the history books, the laws, or even the movies that have come out about the Chinese Americans. This very honest representation of their lives was well written and full of information. There were many things that I had learned differently or, in some cases, didn’t even learn in my classes until now. It was all just swept under the rug by the writers of history

This book is set up with short vignettes that break up six other stories of, mainly, the men in Maxine Hong Kingston’s family. It shows the struggle of Chinese-Americans in their immigration and their becoming American citizens when they first got here. The story touches a lot on the racism that they encountered as well. When there were stereotypes, Kingston was able to spin them to give them a sort of double-consciousness. There was the negative stereotyped version, then there was also the positive version. 
This was a very interesting, and eye-opening book. If you want to learn more about the Chinese American history, pick this book up.