By Annie Ren Wang
On the evening of March 11, over a hundred people gathered on Zoom to hear Michael Liu, a lifelong Boston Chinatown activist, discuss his new book, Forever Struggle: Activism, Identity, & Survival in Boston’s Chinatown, 1880-2018, with Carolyn Chou, Executive Director of the Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW).
The date marked about one year since the pandemic interrupted our lives without warning and continues to disrupt them, especially in the case of communities of color. What this pandemic has made so clear is that the difficulties marginalized communities face today are by no means new and that to grapple with them requires the collective effort of the people. The countless panels on Zoom displaying the faces of various people hailing from all across the country is a testament to how Boston Chinatown’s struggle persists today.
Oftentimes, we think that history is distant, a perception perpetuated by the fact that historians often haven’t experienced the history that they write about. That isn’t the case for Liu, who understands how that history ties to his activism and experience growing up in Chinatown. The people he writes about are more than just characters on a page—they are friends and family that have shaped Chinatown’s history and future.
It’s with that deep understanding of Chinatown that Liu seeks to contest the common focus of Boston’s history on elites and dominant groups. His book amplifies the ways that ordinary people in communities of color have heavily contributed to what Boston is today.
“I think the typical picture of Chinatown and its people is that they’re bystanders to the river of US history,” Liu said. “But I think the book shows that we’re actually in the middle of the river, that we fought the currents and we change its course sometimes.”
Liu called attention to the resilience and perseverance of the Chinatown community and emphasizes how their successes couldn’t be possible without the work of women, children, and other communities of color. The efforts of the Boston Chinese Parents Association (BCPA), which he discusses in detail in Forever Struggle, is a particularly striking example of this.
BCPA was an organization formed in 1975 in response to the school department’s plan to bus almost 1,000 Chinese elementary and high school children to areas of violence and high racial tension. Despite facing pushback from both institutions and community leadership, BCPA, with female garment workers at its helm, didn’t give up on its fight for fair treatment, eventually culminating in the Department of Justice and school department ceding to almost all of its demands.
This victory—a first for neighborhood activists—was a turning point for Chinatown, forcing institutions to recognize the neighborhood as willing to and capable of advocating for its rights and needs. Upon hearing about Chinatown’s success, other communities of color, including Latino parents in El Comité de Padres and the Black caucus, reached out to BCPA, paving the way for multiracial bonds crucial to Chinatown’s future mobilization.
Aside from the Chinatown community, Liu hoped that his book would also be meaningful for other communities of color. “With globalization, more and more communities like Chinatown are being established,” he said. “But, at the same time, with gentrification and development, cities like Boston are pushing them out.” He sees Chinatown’s long history of struggle as playing a role in assisting these communities in their own struggles, sparking discussions on how to sustain themselves.
Achieving stability in Chinatown and elsewhere is what inspires Liu and other activists to continue fighting. He reminded participants of the ongoing nature of the toil to build the collective power of everyday people and the importance of connection—not just within Chinatown, but also with other communities of color. With the publication of Forever Struggle, Liu sends a crucial message: in order to understand our present and strive for a desired future, we must acknowledge and understand our history.
