About this item
From the winner of the M.F.K. Fisher Book Prize and a New York Public Library Cullman fellow, comes a sweeping narrative history of the Chinese Exclusion Act through an intimate portrayal of one family's epic journey to lay down roots in America as the only child of a single mother in Queens, Ava Chin found her family history was shrouded in mystery. She had never met her father, and her grandparents' stories didn't match the history she read at school. Mott Street traces Chin's quest to understand her Chinese American family's story. Over decades of painstaking research, she finds not only her father but also the building where generations of both sides of her family lived.Breaking the silence surrounding her family's past meant first confronting the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 - the first federal law to restrict immigration by race and nationality, barring Chinese immigrants from citizenship for six decades.
About the Author
Ava Chin is the author of the award-winning "Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love, and the Perfect Meal," which Library Journal named one of the "Best Books of 2014." Described by Kirkus Reviews as "A delectable feast of the heart," Eating Wildly won 1st Prize in the MFK Fisher Book Awards 2015. Ava Chin's writing has appeared in the New York Times (as the "Urban Forager") , Marie Claire, the Village Voice, and Saveur, among others. An associate professor of creative nonfiction at CUNY, she lives in Manhattan with her husband and daughter. The Huffington Post named her one of "9 Contemporary Authors You Should Be Reading."