Diaspora and Class Consciousness

Shanshan Lan is a research assistant professor in the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University.

• Introduction: Is This What You Call Racial Discrimination? 1. Imagining Chicago’s "Chinatown Community": The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Boundaries 2. Racial Learning Between China and the United States: A Transnational Perspective 3. Bridgeport: The Politics and Poetics of Space 4. The Ethnic Crucible of Learning to Labor 5. Chinese Immigrants Navigating Mexican Chicago 6. Citizenship, Class and Coalition Building 7. "I Feel Somewhat American.": Race and Class Consciousness among Chinese American Youth. Conclusion: In Search of Dignity and Respect

"Shanshan Lan's Diaspora and Class Consciousness is a vivid portrait of Chinese American Chicagoland. She is clever not to remain within the confines of the Chinese American community, telling the story of its emergence and consolidation. What she does instead is tell the story of how Chinese immigrant workers rub shoulders with African Americans, Latinos, Whites and others — forging their own sense of self in these ethnic conversations, building up their own sense of class consciousness and dignity in the interstices of their complex lives."-Vijay Prashad, author of Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity and Uncle Swami: Being South Asian in America.