In this episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, author and CUNY professor Ava Chin, a 5th generation Chinese New Yorker, discusses her new book, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming.
The book artfully explores themes of exclusion as it relates to all Chinese Americans, plus personally for Chin with her father, a “crown prince” of Chinatown that she didn’t meet until adulthood. Chin reveals personal family stories against the backdrop of the U.S. eugenics movement and draws a connecting line between the current rise in violence against Asians in North America and anti-immigration laws more than 100 years old.