Michael Luo

St. Louis County Library Foundation’s Westfall Politics and History Series Presents Executive Editor at The New Yorker Michael Luo

 
Author of “Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America”
 

In Conversation with Ruth E. Kim, Volunteer Ambassador for The Very Asian Foundation and Board Trustee of Missouri History Museum

 
Presented in Partnership with the Missouri Historical Society and The Very Asian Foundation

In Celebration of AAPI Heritage Month

Executive editor for The New Yorker, Michael Luo presents a masterful history of the Chinese in America that traces a more than century-long struggle to belong. “Strangers in the Land” tells the story of a people who, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, migrated by the tens of thousands. Americans initially welcomed these Chinese arrivals, but, as their numbers grew, horrific episodes of racial terror erupted. At the book’s heart is a shameful chapter of American history: the brutal driving out of Chinese residents from towns across the American West. Today there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States and yet the “stranger” label, Luo writes, remains. 

Doors open at 6:00 p.m.

Books available from Left Bank Books.