Chink! by Cheng-Tsu Wu

A Meridian Book, First Printing 1972. Light wear to covers, no underlining or highlighting in text.

“"A Chinaman's chance" is a phrase long used in this country to describe hopeless odds, and like many colloquialisms, it evolved from historical fact. The wave of Chinese immigration came in the mid nineteenth century when the labor market on the West Coast was expanding and the initial response to these immigrants was favorable, for they were enterprising and hard-working. But when the Chinese became clear-cut competition to local labor, then troubles began and the discrimination spread from local harassment to the Congress of the United States where a variety of discriminatory laws were passed against them.

"Chink!" documents the origin and development of prejudice against the Chinese, from slurs in California Governor Stanford's inaugural address to the pervasive slanders of Sax Rohmer, who created the evil Dr. Fu-Manchu, from the discriminatory local laws (after 1854 Chinese testimony was not admissible evidence against whites in court) and the national Exclusion Law of 1882 to the terrible massacre in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and the banishment of 3,000 Chinese from the city of Tacoma.

"A Chinaman's chance" was not an empty saying--it meant no chance at all.