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Chinese Heart of Texas
By Mel Brown |
ORDER -- Item #3298, Price $20.00
Most importantly, Chinese Heart of Texas is about what enabled the
Chinese to stay at a time when they were being driven out of many
other places. No ethnic group faced the unique struggles and
prejudices which confronted them as they chose to become Americans.
And no other group of people met those challenges quite so well and
with as much success as did the sojourners from ancient China.
San Antonio became a good home when its own uniqueness provided
acceptance and opportunity. The detailed telling of this tale is here
along with many previously unpublished photographs.
Large stories and small ones combine to make a colorful mosaic of
Chinese trials and triumphs -- from being unwanted aliens to ordinary
citizens. Some became respected physicians or prosperous businessmen
while others became decorated soldiers, sailors and airmen.
While the Chinese were becoming Americans and Texans in every sense,
they produced a century of history rich with texture, important in
scope and remarkable by example.
CHINESE HEART OF TEXAS was a labor of love that in some ways wrote
itself due to the author's very curious connections with the Chinese
in Texas, discovered only after the book was begun.
Since attending a family reunion in Oxford, Mississippi, his paternal
grandfather's birthplace, in July, 1964, Mel has also had a personal
bond with the deep South that has left its mark on his persona.
Book Description From the Author's Website
Chinese Heart of Texas: The San Antonio Community (1875-1975) is one
hundred years of history and one hundred years of pride. This is the
vibrant story of why and how the Chinese came to Texas a few years
after the American Civil War.
Description
This book is well illustrated throughout with many fascinating
pictures of the Chinese community of San Antonio, Texas from 1875
through 1975. The text is equally as fascinating as the pictures
covering as it does aspects of a community whose history isn't very
well known. For one thing, who would have thought that Chinese
Americans became air-mail pilots during the 1930s? Apparently many
Chinese American youth clubs of that time formed air flying clubs to
prepare Chinese American pilots for the war against Japan. That story
among many others traces the course of immigration, discrimination,
struggle, and finally a kind of acceptance, finally told in this
well-recieved book.
About the Author
Mel Brown is a fifth generation Texan and the first person in his
family to graduate from college (BA, 1969, University of Texas -
Austin). He is a self-trained, fine art painter of landscapes and
aviation subjects and author of three books. Mel's wife of three
decades, Lorraine, is Chinese American, and they are the parents of
three children.
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Copyright © 2005 by AACP, Inc.
Most recent revision May 4, 2005