Yin & Yang Press
ÒWhen You Drink Water, Remember the SourceÓ
Southern Fried Rice: Life in A Chinese
Laundry in the Deep South, 2005
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story of immigrant parents and their children,
the only Chinese in a city in the Deep South, running a laundry from just
before the Great Depression until the early 1950s when they moved to San
Francisco to escape social and cultural isolation and join a Chinese community.
The memoir raises issues that are central to the daily lives of immigrants from
many lands as they struggle to adjust to a new country with a different
language and customs. It describes how they encounter prejudice and
discrimination against racial minorities in America, manage to earn a living
through hard work and thriftiness, stay connected to family and relatives in
their homeland, and eventually become acculturated to American ways. Southern Fried Rice illustrates the immigrantsÕ struggle to
raise children who often reject or question the values and customs of the
parentsÕ homeland as they become ÔAmericanized,Õ and examines how children face
and resolve conflicts and dilemmas related to ethnic identity and cultural
clashes with their immigrant parents.
The
current focus on immigration issues in America makes Southern Fried Rice especially relevant as it provides
insights that promote better understanding of the difficult lives of many
immigrant families in America. Although it is the story of only one family,
Southern Fried Rice has
wide appeal because of its relevance to peoples across a wide range of
backgrounds. The story has fascinated audiences differing in age, gender,
ethnic background, and education level for it deals with many experiences
universally encountered by immigrant families.

Author
Bio: Born
in 1937, John Jung grew up living above the Sam Lee Laundry in Macon until the
early 1950s when his parents moved the family to San Francisco. Earning a Ph.D.
from Northwestern University in 1962, he was a Professor of Psychology at
California State University, Long Beach for 40 years, publishing many research
articles as well as eight college textbooks, including Psychology of Alcohol
And Other Drugs,
Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Sage Publications, 2001.
ÒSouthern Fried RiceÓ is searchable at: http://books.google.com Available
online: www.lulu.com/content/142027
Scholarly Praise for Southern
Fried Rice
ÒSouthern Fried Rice tells the
overlooked history of Chinese Americans in the Deep South through the authorÕs
account of his familyÕs experiences in Georgia running a laundry from the late
1920s through the 1950s. This
inside view of an immigrant family who struggled to make a living and to
maintain connections with their Chinese heritage and homeland highlights the
mutability and complexity of Chinese American identity and the frequently
forgotten ethnic and racial diversity of the South.Ó
Krystyn Moon, Asst. Prof. of
History, Georgia State University
Author, ÒYellowface: Creating the
Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s-1920sÓ
ÒÉ a humane and personal reflection É
an incisive clarity that shines extra light on the mundane oddities and inhuman
logic of everyday life in the South before the Civil Rights era. É a rare glimpse at the fairly common
experience of those Americans who found themselves in the impossible spaces of
the American racial order, a world that is both thankfully distant and yet
hauntingly familiar still.Ó
Henry Yu, Associate Professor
of History, UCLA and University of British Columbia
Author, ÒThinking Orientals, Migration, Contact, and
Exoticism in Modern AmericaÓ
ÒÉBeing the only Chinese in town, their
lives were certainly not mint julep and magnolias. Southern Fried Rice describes the process of running
a laundry and the difficulty of raising children isolated from other Chinese...
Through it all, the family, itself, remained steadfast in their cultural traits
and folkways. ÉQuan Shee, the authorÕs mother, was truly a woman warrior...Ó
Sylvia Sun Minnick Author, ÒSamfow, The San
Joaquin Chinese ExperienceÓ
ÒSouthern Fried
Rice offers a fascinating and insightful account of Chinese-American
family life in the context of restraints on immigration and the U.S. racial and
economic systems. This story of one remarkable family offers valuable insight
about economic struggles in difficult times, intergenerational relations,
continuing ties to Chinese culture and community, family obligation, gender,
the key role of laundries in Chinese economic opportunity, and much else. This is a charming and informative
book.Ó
Paul Rosenblatt, Professor of Family
Social Sciences, University of Minnesota
Author, Multiracial Couples: Black and White Voices
"John Jung provides an insightful account
of himself and his family in the context of Chinese immigrants who lived in the
American South during the 1940s and 1950s. The unique experiences and struggles
of his family members serve both to confirm some principles from social science
research on Chinese in America as well as to remind us of the importance of
individual differences, yielding meaningfulness and substance to issues of
culture, race relations, immigration, and identity development. This engaging,
candid, and often humorous and heartwarming book is an important contribution
not only to the fields of psychology, sociology, and history but also to
literature. Social scientists and students alike will find the book immensely
fascinating and satisfying."
Stanley
Sue, Distinguished Professor, Psychology and Asian American Studies, University
of California, Davis Co-Editor,Ó Asian American Mental Health: Assessment
Theories and MethodsÓ
ÒThis narrative, woven with genuine scholarship about the
lives of Chinese immigrants, is a masterful bit of storytelling. It is an admirable and valuable
contribution.Ó
Ronald Gallimore, Professor, Department of Psychiatry
& Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA
Author, ÒRousing Minds to Life, Teaching, learning,and schooling in
social contextÓ
ÒRich with historical details of immigration, John Jung's
engaging memoir about growing up Chinese in the segregated South is an
insightful observation about the resilience of Asian American families and the
fluidity of culture and ethnic identities across different historical moments
and racialized spaces.Ó
Barbara Kim, Asst. Prof. Asian American
Studies, Cal State University, Long Beach
ÒSouthern Fried Rice
demonstrates the fluidity of regional and national identity and is both a
construction and deconstruction of "Chinese-ness.ÓÉThese stories offer
much toward confirming and complicating popular notions of what it means to be
"American" just as it traces the slippery identity shifts of what it
means to be "Chinese" É a valuable mirror that will help move the
history of those who are neither Black nor White towards a more deserving
central role in the national and international human story.Ó
Stephanie Y. Evans, Assistant Professor, African
American Studies and Women's Studies, University of Florida Author,ÓBlack Women
in The Ivory Tower, 1850-1954: An Intellectual HistoryÓ
ÒThis interesting memoir presents a
unique view of ethnic identity development. It provides
fascinating insights into the process of learning what it means to be
Chinese when there is no Chinese community, or even other Chinese families, to interact
with, and the way subsequent experiences in -- and out -- of a Chinese
community further shape this process.Ó
Jean Phinney, Professor of Psychology, Cal
State U, Los Angeles Creator of the Multi-Group Ethnic Identity Measure
ÒIn Southern Fried Rice, John Jung offers an
intriguing and unique perspective on American immigration. Based on his
experience as a child in the only Chinese family in Macon, Georgia in the
mid-20th century, JungÕs story is a fascinating account of the negotiation of
personal and ethnic identity in a foreign environment. His narrative highlights
many of the features of the larger society, including both government policy
and situational practice, that shape the lives of immigrants, both then and
now.Ó
Kay
Deaux, Distinguished Professor, Psychology, City University of New York
Graduate Center Author, ÒTo be An
ImmigrantÓ
A charming and engrossing self-ethnography. More importantly, John JungÕs book
enhances the archive on Asians in the South as well as our understanding of how
Jim Crow situated the Chinese between ÒwhiteÓ and Òcolored.Ó
Leslie Bow, English and Asian American Studies (Director) University of
Wisconsin
Author "Betrayal and Other Acts of Subversion:
Feminism, Sexual Politics, Asian American Women's LiteratureÓ
Coast To Coast and, even Down Under É Readers Love Southern Fried Rice
Your book is a joy to read. It has a
beautiful flow to it and an enriching quality that is easier to feel than it is
to describe. Couched in humor, it deals with the painful and serious matter of
day-to-day struggles of existence of a couple who came here with hardly
anything more than faith in their hearts and steel in their spines.
Krishan
Saxena, Kensington, California
Your book is the one that I had promised
myself that I would write one day, but you went ahead and wrote it. You did a
wonderful job!
Henry
Tom, Frederick, Maryland
Thank you for telling your story in such an
engaging manner. While your story
is personal it is also universal because of its working class foundation laced
with layers of Chinese ethnicity, family structure and dynamics, and the
specificity of the South.
Flo
Oy Wong, Artist, Sunnyvale, California
Enjoyed very much reading your family
history revealing a unique experience yet sharing many of the same problems of
families in Chinese laundries. Yours is one of the few written accounts of the
many family-run laundries in the U. S. Thank you for the careful documentation
of this history, which would be otherwise forgotten.
Tunney
Lee, Boston, Massachusetts
"Southern Fried Rice" is a
well-written and factually documented memoir that gave me insight into the
lives of Chinese in the South, especially those living where there were no
other Chinese, as you did in Macon. Your move to San Francisco must have been
as much of a cultural shock for you as it was for me, an African American
moving to the Bay Area from Memphis.
Leatha Ruppert, Cotati, California
"Riveting - couldn't put the book down
until it was finished - it mirrored many of my own childhood experiences
growing up in New Zealand in the 50s. The Chinese immigrant experience must
have been the same the world over."
Helen
Wong, Auckland, New Zealand
A ÔWEB JOURNALÕ About the Origins of the Book and Audience
reception at Book Talks/signings
Chinese Laundries: Tickets To
Survival on Gold Mountain
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social history of Chinese laundries in the U.S. and Canada that examines their origins and development as a major factor on the economic, psychological, and sociological status of Chinese immigrants from 1850s to 1950s. Yin & Yang Press, 2007.

Scholars Praise for "CHINESE LAUNDRIESÓ
"
Éimportant window into
the history of the early Chinese immigrants. . . The laundrymen faced
struggles, challenges, and even disappointments; yet, the Chinese laundry became
a valued and necessary enterprise É
Sylvia Sun Minnick,
SamFow: The San Joaquin Chinese Legacy and Stockton's Chinese Community
É a significant
contribution to the history of Chinese laundries É best told by someone like
Jung who experienced a Ôlaundry life,Õ and understands its psychological impact
on the Chinese laundrymen and their families. . .
Murray K. Lee, Curator
of Chinese American History, San Diego Chinese Historical Museum
É rewarding study of an
era marked by invention born of dire necessity, an unforgiving host society
that demanded Chinese laundrymenÕs services but then punished them for being
too good at it, É a long overdue analysis of a familiar experience hidden in
plain sight.
Mel Brown, Chinese
Heart of Texas, The San Antonio Chinese Community, 1875-1975.
É a welcome
contribution to Chinese American studies that depicts the plight of early
generations of Chinese caught in the predicament of operating laundries to
provide for their families, ... while enduring extreme hardship and loneliness
... inclusion of historic documents, photographs, newspaper article excerpts,
and revealing personal stories and insider observations from a few of the many
who, like the author, grew up and worked in their family laundries. The subject
deserves attention and further exploration in view of the significant impact
that the laundry had not only on the Chinese American experience, but also in
the social and cultural histories of the U.S. and Canada
Joan S. Wang, Race, Gender,
and Laundry Work: The Roles of Chinese Laundrymen and American Women in the
United States, 1850–1950, Journal of American Ethnic History
É a remarkable book...a
comprehensive historical study of the Chinese laundries in the United States, a
profound analysis of the psychological experiences of the Chinese laundrymen in
America and their families in China; and above all, written by someone who has
intimate experiences with the Chinese laundry, it is a tribute to those Chinese
immigrants whose labor and sacrifice laid the foundation of the Chinese
American community, and a testimony of the Chinese laundrymenÕs resilience,
resourcefulness, and humanity.
Renqiu Yu, To Save
China, To Save Ourselves, The Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York.
From the Foreword:
What is remarkable is
the combination of this historical perspective with his social psychological
descriptions and analyses of laundrymen and their descendants. The personal
life stories, with their inner thought, feeling, values, attitudes, work
experiences and survival hardships, are skillfully presented with penetrating
insights and observations. These perspectives present an overall picture of the
history and the life and work of the laundrymen.
Ban Seng Hoe, Curator
of Asian Studies, Canadian Museum of Civilization
Chopsticks
in the Land of Cotton:
Lives of
Mississippi Delta Chinese Grocers
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The story of how a few Chinese immigrants found their way to the
Mississippi River Delta in the late 1870s and earned their living with small
family operated grocery stores in neighborhoods where mostly black cotton
plantation workers lived. What was their status in the segregated black and
white world of that time and place? How did this small group preserve their
culture and ethnic identity? "Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton" is a
social history of the lives of these pioneering families and the unique and valuable
role they played in their communities for over a century.


Scholars
Praise for Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton
John JungÕs 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 Ôsurvived,Õ 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
AntonioÕs 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)
ÒChopsticksÓ 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. ÒChopsticksÓ pays tribute to the resilience
and Òcan-doÓ 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. JungÕs 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 JungÕs 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