Between Two Worlds: Chinese Americans During the Cold War
Jennifer Fang
On January 3, 2012, Jennifer Fang, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Delaware and Predoctoral Fellow at the National Museum of American History gave a presentation at the NMAH entitled, “Between Two Worlds: Chinese Americans and Suburbanization During the Cold War.” Drawing from Fang’s research at the NMAH Archives Center, the talk examined the relationship between Americans’ shifting perceptions of Chinese people from unwanted and inassimilable foreigners to model minorities, changing immigration laws, and the influx of well-educated, elite Chinese immigrants displaced by the Communist takeover of Mainland China in the decades after World War II.
Fang’s dissertation explores how American-born Chinese and first-generation immigrants settled in the suburbs and constructed hyphenated Chinese and American identities that were shaped by the suburban environment. Using oral history interviews along with traditional archival sources, Fang’s work helps to shift the focus of Chinese American history away from urban Chinatowns while simultaneously arguing that the postwar suburbs were not as culturally or racially homogenous as earlier scholars have portrayed them to be.
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