Ah Quin: Coping with the Chinese Exclusion Era
In the decade leading up the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Law, Ah Quin lived in and around the largest Chinatown in America, which not coincidentally became the hub for Denis Kearney’s “The Chinese Must Go!” Workingmen’s movement. Living in the midst of anti-Chinese hostility, Ah Quin, like many of his countrymen, regularly retreated to the Chinese theaters and the five different Chinese Christian Missions within the twelve-block perimeter of Chinatown. Methodist Minister Otis Gibson thought the Chinese theater and Christianity were contradictory forces. What did they represent for Ah Quin and why did he, and so many like him, visit the churches and theaters hundreds of times, at nearly every chance they had and often on the same evenings? Why did these particular entities enjoy their Golden Ages at a time when Chinese were most denigrated in this country? Join us to hear award-winning Professor Susie Lan Cassel discuss her current research. Dr. Cassel is Professor of Literature and Writing Studies at California State University San Marcos. She has published widely in the fields of Chinese American history, literature, oral history, and composition studies. She is editing the scholarly edition of the Ah Quin Diary which is forthcoming from Stanford University Press.