Strangers in the Land

Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America

De: Michael Luo

Narrado por: Eric Yang

From New Yorker writer Michael Luo comes a masterful narrative history of the Chinese in America that traces the sorrowful theme of exclusion and documents their more than century-long struggle to belong.

A TIME MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK | A NEW YORK TIMES NONFICTION BOOK TO READ THIS SPRING

"A story about aspiration and belonging that is as universal as it is profound.”—Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing

"A gift to anyone interested in American history. I couldn't stop turning pages."—Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown

"What history should be—richly detailed, authoritative, and compelling."—David Grann, author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon

Strangers in the Land tells the story of a people who, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, migrated by the tens of thousands to a distant land they called Gum Shan­–Gold Mountain. Americans initially welcomed these Chinese arrivals, but, as their numbers grew, horrific episodes of racial terror erupted on the Pacific coast. A prolonged economic downturn that idled legions of white workingmen helped create the conditions for what came next: a series of progressively more onerous federal laws aimed at excluding Chinese laborers from the country, marking the first time the United States barred a people based on their race. In a captivating debut, Michael Luo follows the Chinese from these early years to modern times, as they persisted in the face of bigotry and persecution, revealing anew the complications of our multiracial democracy.

Luo writes of early victims of anti-Asian violence, like Gene Tong, a Los Angeles herbalist who was dragged from his apartment and hanged by a mob during one of the worst mass lynchings in the country’s history; of demagogues like Denis Kearney, a sandlot orator who became the face of the anti-Chinese movement in the late-1870s; of the pioneering activist Wong Chin Foo and other leaders of the Chinese community, who pressed their new homeland to live up to its stated ideals. At the book’s heart is a shameful chapter of American history: the brutal driving out of Chinese residents from towns across the American West. The Chinese became the country’s first undocumented immigrants: hounded, counted, suspected, surveilled.

In 1889, while upholding Chinese exclusion, Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field characterized them as “strangers in the land.” Only in 1965 did America’s gates swing open to people like Luo’s parents, immigrants from Taiwan. Today there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States and yet the “stranger” label, Luo writes, remains. Drawing on archives from across the country and written with a New Yorker writer’s style and sweep, Strangers in the Land is revelatory and unforgettable, an essential American story.

©2025 Michael Luo (P)2025 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"This book is a gift to anyone interested in American history. I learned something on every page. And I couldn't stop turning pages. Michael Luo has somehow synthesized two hundred years of history into a compelling narrative that manages to be comprehensive, illuminating, and deeply moving. I'll treasure this work and return to it often and I imagine many others will, too."—Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown, winner of the National Book Award

“This book is an astonishing feat of urgent history. Michael Luo has unearthed a buried chapter of America’s rise, in which Chinese immigrants fought their way through violence and scapegoating to build the nation’s future. But he illuminates much more than the past; Strangers in the Land reimagines how the idea of Asia reverberates in American culture today, pulled between belonging, rejection, success, and suspicion. A powerful new entry in the canon on American identity."—Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, winner of the National Book Award

"Strangers in the Land is what history should be—richly detailed, authoritative, and compelling. Luo pieces together the stunning and shocking story of a people's journey to this country, and in the process reveals an essential part of the story of America."—David Grann, New York Times-bestselling author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon

Important to understand the past so we don’t repeat its mistakes

Well researched and written account of what led to and the events during Chinese Exclusion period in America. For a country that prides itself as a beacon of light, this was one of the darker chapters in its history. We’re on the verge of repeating it as the anti-China sentiment that prevails politics today is clearly bipartisan. We can do better.

A history you almost certainly haven't heard

This book, in many ways, is a triumph of historical accounting. It is chock full of incredible, shocking and devastating stories, but also with hope and beauty at times. The overall point—about the way in which the Chinese have been othered and excluded, while white Europeans have been admitted and assimilated and how that has shaped the Chinese American experience—is well taken. If I have one small complaint, it's that at times it lacked the kind of unifying narrative arcs that make well written histories so gripping. But every story feels vital and necessary, and I only wish there had been even more attention paid to the Chinese in the period that became the book's epilogue.

Definitely recommended, though I'm not sure it's best suited for audio. The performance is great, but some might feel it's just not that kind of book.