Mae Ngai

Winner of the 2022 Bancroft Prize
Shortlisted for the 2022 Cundill History Prize
Finalist for the 2022 Los Angeles Times Book Prize

How Chinese migration to the world's goldfields upended global power and economics and forged modern conceptions of race.

In roughly five decades, between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold

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This book traces the origins of the "illegal alien" in American law and society, explaining why and how illegal migration became the central problem in U.S. immigration policy-a process that profoundly shaped ideas and practices about citizenship, race, and state authority in the twentieth century. Mae Ngai offers a close reading of the legal regime of restriction that commenced in the 1920s-its statutory architecture, judicial genealogies, administrative...

Mae Ngai is professor of history and the Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies at Columbia University. She is the author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. The Lucky Ones uncovers the story of the Tape family in post-gold rush, racially explosive San Francisco. Mae Ngai paints a fascinating picture of how the role of immigration broker allowed patriarch Jeu Dip (Joseph Tape) to both protest and profit...

"A posthumous collection of over 200 breathtaking photographs that document the history and cultural impact of the Asian American social justice movement, through the lens of beloved photographer Corky Lee--the man who sought to change the world one photograph at a time Using his camera as his pen and sword, Corky Lee documented Asian American-Pacific Islander communities for fifty continuous years, breaking the stereotype of Asian Americans as docile,...