Chinatown in Pictures
Chinese in Boston: 1870-1965, $19.99, Arcadia Publishing. By Wing-kai To and the Chinese Historical Society of New England. 127 pages.
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Feb 1, 2008
The origin of Boston’s Chinatown can be traced to the 1870s, when Chinese workers from more established Chinatowns in New York and San Francisco came to Boston and settled in the area in and around South Cove. When they arrived, the neighborhood was inhabited by Jewish, Syrian, Italian and Irish immigrants, and sat on land that had been reclaimed by filling in marsh.
Since Boston Chinatown’s origins along Oxford Street, the community has struggled against the racism codified in the Chinese Exclusionary Acts and police raids, against cavalier urban planning projects the wounds from which are only beginning to be healed with the dismantling of the Central Artery and re-development of Parcel 24, against institutional expansion, and now against rising costs and gentrification.
In spite of the long history of the neighborhood, it wasn’t until 1992 that the Chinese Historical Society of New England was founded to “document, preserve, and promote the history and legacy of Chinese immigration in New England.” As the most significant and largest enclave of Asian settlement in New England, Boston’s Chinatown would be a major component in the Society’s work. Operating without paid staff, the efforts at preservation could only be said to be tenuous. However, the important work of documentation has gone forward, and finally has found a secure place for posterity in the form of a new book.
Wing-kai To is an associate professor of history at Bridgewater State College, and together with the Chinese Historical Society of New England, has just completed a book that documents the visual history of Chinatown. “Chinese in Boston: 1870-1965” is the first book that attempts to serve as a comprehensive repository for the visual history of Chinatown from this period.
Stretching from the neighborhood’s foundation to just after the construction of the Central Artery, the images tell a story, even if there is no obvious plot.
Professor To does not narrate. The only text in the book is in the acknowledgment and introduction, and also in the captions. This is not, then, an unabridged history, and To is not claiming to be an authority.
With short descriptions that humbly contextualize each photo, the layout of the book itself encourages free association and independent investigation.
In a way, it’s a shame that books are an ordered number of pages where page two is followed by three is followed by four, and so on until you turn the back cover. While To organizes the book somewhat chronologically and according to seven themes (grouped into chapters: “Arrivals in New England”; “Settlement in Boston Chinatown”; “Community, Culture, and Education”; “Women, Families, and Activism”; “War, Nationalism, and Citizenship”; “Urban Renewal and Acculturation”; and “Remembering the Past”), there is an impulse to rip out the pages and create new image-sentences by rearranging the pictures to tell different stories.
And that’s just what the spirit of photographs is. On the one hand, they are more authoritative than text because they reference a physical arrangement of people and objects as they actually existed. On the other, they are more mysterious because they are only starting points—windows onto a whole past world that the building and rebuilding of the urban landscape paves over.
This book is an important first step in creating narratives of Chinatown. Not a single history, but the combined network of lived experience that permeates the brick and soul of the neighborhood to this day.
Since Boston Chinatown’s origins along Oxford Street, the community has struggled against the racism codified in the Chinese Exclusionary Acts and police raids, against cavalier urban planning projects the wounds from which are only beginning to be healed with the dismantling of the Central Artery and re-development of Parcel 24, against institutional expansion, and now against rising costs and gentrification.
In spite of the long history of the neighborhood, it wasn’t until 1992 that the Chinese Historical Society of New England was founded to “document, preserve, and promote the history and legacy of Chinese immigration in New England.” As the most significant and largest enclave of Asian settlement in New England, Boston’s Chinatown would be a major component in the Society’s work. Operating without paid staff, the efforts at preservation could only be said to be tenuous. However, the important work of documentation has gone forward, and finally has found a secure place for posterity in the form of a new book.
Wing-kai To is an associate professor of history at Bridgewater State College, and together with the Chinese Historical Society of New England, has just completed a book that documents the visual history of Chinatown. “Chinese in Boston: 1870-1965” is the first book that attempts to serve as a comprehensive repository for the visual history of Chinatown from this period.
Stretching from the neighborhood’s foundation to just after the construction of the Central Artery, the images tell a story, even if there is no obvious plot.
Professor To does not narrate. The only text in the book is in the acknowledgment and introduction, and also in the captions. This is not, then, an unabridged history, and To is not claiming to be an authority.
With short descriptions that humbly contextualize each photo, the layout of the book itself encourages free association and independent investigation.
In a way, it’s a shame that books are an ordered number of pages where page two is followed by three is followed by four, and so on until you turn the back cover. While To organizes the book somewhat chronologically and according to seven themes (grouped into chapters: “Arrivals in New England”; “Settlement in Boston Chinatown”; “Community, Culture, and Education”; “Women, Families, and Activism”; “War, Nationalism, and Citizenship”; “Urban Renewal and Acculturation”; and “Remembering the Past”), there is an impulse to rip out the pages and create new image-sentences by rearranging the pictures to tell different stories.
And that’s just what the spirit of photographs is. On the one hand, they are more authoritative than text because they reference a physical arrangement of people and objects as they actually existed. On the other, they are more mysterious because they are only starting points—windows onto a whole past world that the building and rebuilding of the urban landscape paves over.
This book is an important first step in creating narratives of Chinatown. Not a single history, but the combined network of lived experience that permeates the brick and soul of the neighborhood to this day.
Article Reference: http://www.sampan.org/show_article.php?display=1443
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