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The Ah Quin Diary is a ten volume, 3,300 page diary spanning twenty-five years from 1877-1902. It is arguably the first significant writing in English by a Chinese immigrant to the United States and, as such, fills a gap in the documentary record of American immigration and labor history, and also the genre of Asian American literature. It begins in 1877 in the Pacific Northwest, just five years before the federal 1882 Chinese Exclusion Law is passed, and thus gives us a rare, first-person Chinese laborer's perspective during the Age of Chinese Exclusion. As important, it challenges the stereotype of an illiterate Chinese workforce since it is written in English, at a length and with a degree of eloquence that few people believed possible for a nineteenth-century Chinese laborer. The goal of this project is to publish with Stanford University Press a scholarly edition of this important primary source.

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Project fields:
Asian American Studies

Program:
Fellowships for College Teachers and Independent Scholars

Division:
Research Programs

Totals:
$50,400 (approved)
$50,400 (awarded)

Grant period:
9/1/2011 – 8/31/2012