Mott Street

plums from the Hong Kong sweets shop with the Japanese name, or tossed white gunpowder-filled pellets to make snapping noises against the pavement. If I had looked up, perhaps I would have seen them, residing right there in the elbow of Mott Street-37 Mott Street-an apartment building that had been the epicenter of the Chinese community for almost seventy-five years.

Built in 1915 after a fire destroyed a funeral parlor and a stable, the red brick building that locals called Sun Lau, or New Building, was considered the height of luxury when it rose from the ashes. The most prominent families of Chinatown flocked to live there, including members of both my maternal and paternal sides. There, they occupied the choicest apartments with views of the cross section of Mott and Pell Streets.

It's a bustling three-pronged, panoramic view here at the intersection of Mott Street and Pell, and this is where our family's story in New York begins.

So many generations of my family have lived in this building-great-grandparents, grandparents and their siblings, parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and now, me. When I last counted, I tallied forty-nine Chins and Ng-Doshims in total, many of whom took their first breaths as wailing newborns here.

Each wing of the family can trace its lineage back to an ancestor born and raised in the same fertile Pearl River Delta, an ocean and a continent away. Although each of them had lived out west collectively through the eras of Lincoln, Grant, Harrison, and Cleveland, it would take decades for their descendants to settle some three thousand miles away, in the apartment building that stood at the heart of the community they called Tong Yun Gai. It was here on Tang People's Street that their descendants became neighbors, lovers, classmates, sworn enemies, and eventually, as fate would have it-through my own birth-family kin.


In the glassy building entrance, I catch a glimpse of myself as I pull

. . Chin writes with a Proustian flourish about scrumptious foodscapes, and her new book a valentine to four generations of her Asian American ancestors plays to her strengths . . . Evocative . . . melding of different voices a kind of free indirect style works without drawing undue attention to itself as a composite form. There s an immediacy to Chin s description . . . [her ancestors] voices have been lovingly preserved in these pages. Rhoda Feng, The Washington Post

The book shines a harsh and unforgiving light on this country s legacy of racist policies, exemplified by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese immigration for over 60 years and denied Chinese American residents the right to become U.S. citizens . . . an important read for those interested in learning about the origins of some of today s most hard-line immigration policy proposals in America. Leland Cheuk, San Francisco Chronicle

The Angela s Ashes for Chinese Americans. Miwa Messer, Poured Over Podcast

Ava Chin, the only child of a single mother in Queens, decided to embark on a quest to learn her family history, which necessitated wading through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the U.S. for six decades. Chin's in-depth research and family detective work led her to a building on Mott Street and a new understanding of herself and her family. Zibby Owens, Good Morning America
 
In the pages of Mott Street, Chin masterfully braids together the roots of her own family tree with the history of Chinese marginalization in America specifically, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which was only repealed during World War II, forcing migrants like her family members to forge new identities. TIME Magazine, 14 New Books You Should Read in April
 
My favorite memoirs are the ones that tell a big story through a personal lens. Chin does this beautifully in Mott Street . . . It s a visceral, vital book that exposes some of America s most shameful history, while uplifting the people who resisted and thrived despite it. Book Riot, 8 Fascinating New Nonfiction Books to Read in April 2023

A remarkable story . . . Mott Street is the focal point of an extraordinary tale of an extended family that throws itself into making life in America work. Gavin Newsham, New York Post

Exceptional . . . Enhanced with rare photographs and documents, Chin achieves on the page what wasn't possible in her own actual life: to entwine her parentage into a single enduring story of abiding resilience and indelible inspiration. Terry Hong, Shelf Awareness (starred review)

Stunning . . . Deeply researched and superbly told, this sweeping saga is sure to become required reading for those seeking to understand America s past and present. Readers will be rapt. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Chinese American writer searches for roots not easily uncovered . . . In this elegantly written, probing narrative, Chin adds weight and substance to those near caricatures, an act of filial homage that ends with the arresting image of the mothers of Mott Street revivified . . . A lively memoir that limns a long family history and helps us understand the troubled history of our nation. Kirkus (starred review)

A beautifully written ode to Chin s family that explores the history of a nation through the eyes of those whose stories of strength, rage, and passion were often suppressed from the historical record . . . important and relevant, and her memoir gives readers a better understanding of immigrants pasts and presents in the U.S. and an idea of how to move forward. Library Journal

This richly narrated family history starts in Chinatown, then amplifies the broader experience of Chinese Americans across two centuries of hardship and opportunity . . . Chin draws upon oral narratives, archival research, photographs, location visits, and intuition to convey her ancestors feelings. Chin expresses familial affection and reveals an ugly anti-Chinese sentiment that unfortunately has made a roaring comeback in our time.' Booklist

Ava Chin accomplishes an astonishing feat: by tracing five generations of her own Chinese American ancestors, she also traces the story of Chinese exclusion, illuminating an often-ignored part of our national past. Mott Street is a vibrant and moving family story, but it s also essential reading for understanding not just Chinese American history, but American history and the American present. Celeste Ng, #1 bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts and Little Fires Everywhere

Ava Chin s quest to learn the story of her family uncovers another story: the American government s almost century-long discriminatory treatment of Chinese immigrants and their children a shameful episode in our history, and one that should be more widely known. Anti-Asian racism did not begin with Covid. Mott Street is written with feeling, with anger, and compassion. It s a book from the heart. Louis Menand, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Free World

Ava Chin's fierce intelligence and gorgeous writing gives us an exciting and essential social history of three generations of Chinese New Yorkers that expands our understanding of American life. This important and much needed work will enrich our common conversation and how we know ourselves. Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show

Mott Street should be required reading. Tracing the lineage of her own family, Ava Chin commits to the written record a foundational piece of American history that has been erased for too long. Thoroughly researched and powerfully told, Mott Street examines the legacy of Exclusion and what it means for a nation, for a family, and for a human. Qian Julie Wang, New York Times Bestselling author of Beautiful Country 
 
Ava Chin entered a six-story building in New York s Chinatown and found a portal one that led not only to both sides of her sprawling and turbulent family history, but to a visceral understanding of the Chinese-American experience in all its glory and pain. Mott Street is a masterful distillation of decades of research and storytelling, written with love, sorrow, and rage. Janice P. Nimura, New York Times Bestselling author of The Doctors Blackwell

Ava Chin blazes a path through the fictions made necessary by the Chinese Exclusion Act to a gorgeously intimate story of her own family across generations and a powerful indictment of the ways this country's past xenophobia reverberates in the present. She discovers that many of her ancestors' histories flow through a single building on Mott Street, a place that simultaneously grounds and unleashes the spirit of their collective story. A beautiful and necessary book. Maud Newton, author of Ancestor Trouble
 
Ava Chin has created a stunning work of genealogy that traces her family s legacy in America back from present day Mott Street in New York City to the early days of Chinese Exclusion in California. It is a tender and loving portrait of her ancestors, depicting their joys and struggles as they built both the nation s infrastructure and spaces of resistance and belonging for those excluded from the nation. More than a family history, Mott Street is a history of a people's survival and a history of America. Grace M. Cho, author Tastes Like War
 
Ava Chin has taken the stories she was told and the hurts that came her way in childhood and transformed them into an historically researched portrayal of two families in a new country that wanted their labor but not their citizenship. Chin reveals the pain that overcomes her as she learns her past but she proceeds by drawing strength from feeling her ancestors all around her in their building in Manhattan's Mott Street. The essence of this story is a yearning to understand the past and to discover what Chin can make of her glorious yet underusing inheritance in her present life as an author, professor, and parent. Mott Street is a masterpiece that opens up a unique history into a consideration of what came before that offers inspiration for all readers. Alice Elliott Dark, author of Fellowship Point

Sweeping yet intimate, Mott Street is a lyrical, gripping account of survival, resilience and resistance. Through tireless research, Ava Chin uncovers the stories of her family that might have been lost to history. Deeply moving and unforgettable. Vanessa Hua, Forbidden City