The Chinese Laundryman: A Study In Social Isolation

New York: New York University Press, 1987. Hardcover. VG- (ex-library w/ stamps to textblock edges, usual stamps & markings, etc. dustjacket taped to cover edges, ID to lower spine; edge-wear to covers; plastic scuffed). black boards w/ gilt spine printing. book ix, 331 pgs w/ charts. black dustjacket w/ yellow printing; protective plastic. From a college library. Pages clean. "Chinese hand laundries have been a fixture of America's urban landscape for over one hundred years. Yet little is publicly known about the workings of this familiar institution which originated shortly after Chinese immigrants had started to arrive in some numbers in California in the 1850s. At that time the Chinese worked in a wide range of occupations, hand laundries being one of them. But with the faltering of the Western economy and as European immigration to the United States mounted, the tide of anti-Chinese sentiment swelled, which culminated in violent evictions of the Chinese from West Coast cities and in the imposition of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The laundry became one of the few occupations in which Chinese were able to continue to work. This book is the definitive scholarly study of Chinese laundries and of those who worked in them in the United States.