Praise for “Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton”

John Jung’s third book about relatively undocumented aspects of Chinese American history is a solid, well-researched, and engagingly written study of the Chinese grocery stores in the Mississippi River Delta from their post-Civil War Reconstruction era beginnings to the present. Jung deftly demonstrates how these sojourners from the Guangdong province found their niche in a unique and challengingly complex social setting, rigidly stratified by race. They not only ‘survived,’ but overcame racism to prosper and eventually become valued members of their communities. After a thorough historical background that provides a framework needed to fully portray their difficult circumstances, the author examines both the sociological and psychological aspects of daily life for Chinese American grocery store families. As a Chinese American who grew up in the Deep South himself, John Jung has a degree of empathy that imbues Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton with an insight both in depth and breadth that is totally requisite for a study of this nature.

Mel Brown, Chinese Heart of Texas, The San Antonio Community, 1875-1975; Editor, TexAsia, San Antonio’s Asian Communities, 1978-2008.

In "Chopsticks in The Land of Cotton," John Jung has done it again! Plunging into the history of Chinese grocers in the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta, he traces their migration history, work, families, and social lives. His work is anchored in a creative mix of oral history, community historical documents and public records, and includes a generous fill of photos. As a study of the complexities of triangular race relations in the Jim Crow South, his work rivals James Loewen's classic study, The Mississippi Chinese.

Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Harvard University Press, 2001); Mine Okubo: Following Her Own Road (University of Washington Press, 2008)

“Chopsticks” tells the story of yet one more example of Chinese tenacity in which John Jung traces the paths of pioneer Chinese immigrants in Mississippi as they moved from laborers to become successful grocery store merchants for decades with family members and relatives serving as the backbone. “Chopsticks” pays tribute to the resilience and “can-do” attitude of these enterprising entrepreneurs.

Sylvia Sun Minnick, Sam Fow,The San Joaquin Chinese Legacy

Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton explores aspects of Chinese settlement in the Mississippi Delta that earlier writings on the subject do not address in detail. Jung analyzes why grocery stores emerged as virtually the only occupation for Chinese in that area instead of farming and hand laundries. He examines the extensive kinship networking that brought male relatives and later whole families to this unlikely region for Chinese settlement. Jung’s impressive book can be enjoyed by ordinary readers for its captivating stories and by scholars for its thorough research and analysis of sources.

Daniel Bronstein, The Formation and Development of Chinese Communities in Atlanta, Augusta, And Savannah, Georgia: From Sojourners To Settlers, 1880-1965

John Jung provides meticulous detail on a subject worth much greater examination: the Chinese grocery stores of the South. These grocery stores were the center of Chinese American family and commercial life in the South, including Texas and the Southwest, for at least half of the twentieth century. Jung illuminates every aspect of these grocery stores, which were as important to black neighborhoods as they were to the Chinese American families who ran them. Especially of interest is Jung’s exploration of the relationships between Chinese Americans and African Americans, a topic distorted by the iconic images of more recent inter-ethnic conflicts. Chopsticks is a valuable contribution to Asian American history.

Irwin Tang, Co-Author and Editor Asian Texans: Our Histories and Our Lives