Origins of Chinese America: Lunchtime with Mae Ngai and Aziz Rana October 7, 2010

Join Mae Ngai and Aziz Rana as they discuss family lives and legal battles that offer insight into the Chinese-American experience. Called an "absorbing story" by The New York Times, The Lucky Ones, the latest book by historian and Guggenheim fellow Mae Ngai, is a compelling account of three generations of the Tape family, whose patriarch, Jeu Dip, arrives by himself on "Gold Mountain" as a young teenage immigrant from China and becomes Joesph Tape. He, his children, and his grandchildren go on to play pivotal roles in the Chinese American community, illuminating the legacy of the immigrant experience for all Americans. In The Two Faces of American Freedom, legal scholar Aziz Rana argues that America’s origins as a settler society have defined how we think of freedom and rights for three centuries. Taking a close look at the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (an act that the first "lucky" Tape generation barely missed) Rana shows the practices of liberty and exclusion that form a central tension in the American political tradition. Legal scholar Jedidiah Purdy calls The Two Faces of Freedom "[a] strikingly original and powerful account of American political culture." This rare multi-genre reading and conversation will look at the Chinese in America from inside and out, revealing their centrality to the American narrative.
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