Events › Virtual Author Talk: Michael Luo - Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America

Join us in-person at the East Boston Branch of Boston Public Library on May 29 for an Exclusive Watch Party — a broadcast discussion from American Ancestors headquarters in the Back Bay about the Chinese experience in America. Esteemed Chinese-American Michael Luo, executive editor of the New Yorker magazine, will present his research going back to the 1850s Gold Rush and his new book Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America. After his brief talk, Luo will be joined on screen by Harvard historian Jill Lepore to talk more about the American experience, then and now. Bring your neighbors, friends, and anyone who has experienced coming to America and/or wants to hear and share thoughts on what it means to be American or an immigrant today.

Drawing on archives from across the country and written with a New Yorker writer’s style and sweep, Michael Luo’s work is revelatory and unforgettable, an essential American story. Strangers in the Land follows the Chinese from their early gold-rush years to modern times; as their numbers grew, horrific episodes of racial terror erupted. 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. Luo documents the terror’s victims, the resultant activism, and the resilience of communities that persisted in the face of bigotry and persecution. 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 remains, says Luo, who will present this history with illustrations before a discussion with the acclaimed American historian and fellow New Yorker writer Jill Lepore.

This program is in partnership and sponsored by American Ancestors.

Michael Luo is an executive editor at The New Yorker and writes regularly for the magazine on politics, religion, and Asian American issues. He joined The New Yorker in 2016. Before that, he spent thirteen years at the New York Times, as a metro reporter, national correspondent, and investigative reporter and editor. He is a recipient of a George Polk Award and a Livingston Award for Young Journalists.

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker. A prize-winning professor, she teaches classes in evidence, historical methods, humanistic inquiry, and American history. Much of her scholarship explores absences and asymmetries in the historical record. She is a wide-ranging and prolific essayist and the author of many award-winning books including These Truths: A History of the United States and The Deadline, a collection of essays. We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, will be published in September.