Author Description

In 1882, Congress passed a Chinese exclusion law that barred the entry of Chinese laborers for ten years. The Chinese thus became the first people to be restricted from immigrating into the United States on the basis of race. Exclusion was renewed in 1892 and 1902 and finally made permanent in 1904. Only in 1943 did Congress rescind all the Chinese exclusion laws as a gesture of goodwill towards China, an ally of the United States during World War II. Entry Denied is a collection of essays on how the Chinese exclusion laws were implemented and how the Chinese as individuals and as a community in the U.S. mobilized to mitigate the restrictions imposed upon them. It is the first book in English to rely on Chinese language sources to explore the exclusion era in Chinese American history. Sucheng Chan, Professor and Chair of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is general editor of Temple's Asian American History and Culture Series.