Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans. By Jean Pfaelzer. (New York: Random House, 2007. xxx, 400 pp. $27.95, ISBN 978-1-4000-6134-1.)

Abstract

Jean Pfaelzer's Driven Out adds to the rapidly growing field of Asian American studies. The subject of the book is hardly new, yet the author is able to deliver a detailed presentation with captivating narratives. Pfaelzer vividly records forgotten events in American history, telling how lawless citizens and dishonest politicians terrorized dozens of communities with Chinese residents and how the victims resisted and even sometimes triumphed. Pfaelzer details the racial tensions in the gold fields—the conflict between the Chinese and whites, between the Indians of California and the invading gold miners, between Americans and the Latin Americans, including Mexicans, Chileans, and Argentineans, and between northerners and southerners over the issue of slavery. Pfaelzer records the lynching and massacre of Chinese in Los Angeles in 1871. In the Northwest, the Chinese working in orchards or in mills became the targets for white laborers; in Butte County, California, white laborers burned down Chinese properties in 1877. In San Francisco, the 1870 San Francisco Cubic Air Ordinance forced the Chinese to pay a fine that ranged from ten to one hundred dollars for living in spaces smaller than five hundred cubic feet. Pfaelzer also reveals the purge of Chinese women—slave girls, prostitutes, merchants’ wives—through legislation and moral crusades.