On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family - Softcover

See, Lisa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679768521 ISBN 13: 9780679768524

Publisher: Vintage, 1996

Synopsis

Out of the stories heard in her childhood in Los Angeles's Chinatown and years of research, See has constructed this sweeping chronicle of her Chinese-American family, a work that takes in stories of racism and romance, entrepreneurial genius and domestic heartache, secret marriages and sibling rivalries, in a powerful history of two cultures meeting in a new world. 82 photos.

About this title

Review:

Lisa See, daughter of novelist Carolyn See, brings a novelist's skill to this sprawling ancestral history. Books tracing the roots of overseas Chinese writers are not uncommon these days, but See uncovered in her family tree a capsule history of the Sino-American diaspora: her great-grandfather, Fong See, founded a California business, married a Caucasian woman and fathered many offspring, and returned periodically to China to redistribute some of his wealth and launch another family. See, a Publishers Weekly writer, has conducted extensive interviews and drawn on family lore for an enthralling saga of ambition, prejudice, love, loyalty, and sorrow--social history at its best.

From the Publisher:

"Astonishing....A comprehensive and exhaustively researched account of a Chinese-American family...that juggles such explosive elements as race, class, tradition, prejudice, poverty, and great wealth in new and relatively unexpected combinations."--The Los Angeles Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0679768521
• ISBN 13: 9780679768524
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448