Description: Laura Madokoro recovers the lost history of millions of displaced Chinese who fled the Communist Revolution and recounts humanitarian efforts to find homes for them outside China. Entrenched bigotry in predominantly white countries, the spread of human rights, Cold War geopolitics, and the Vietnam War shaped refugee policies that still hold sway.
Brief description: Laura Madokoro is Assistant Professor of History at McGill University.
Review Quotes: [Madokoro's] account is valuable for its details and for its demonstration of how the use of the refugee label has sometimes been apt, sometimes misguided, and almost always shifting and ambiguous in its implications. U.S. readers should brace themselves for a framework that regards the U.S. as only one example of 'white settler societies, ' but they will thereby gain useful perspective on how the U.S. compares--sometimes favorably and sometimes not--with other countries that have similar English origins and sharp racial categorizations. Madokoro duly notes the enormous progress that has been made in recent decades regarding race, but she remains pained by the long history of rejection of Asians as refugees and as migrants more generally.--D. W. Haines "Choice" (3/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)