On Gold Mountain · The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family

When she was a girl, Lisa See spent summers in the cool, dark recesses of her

family's antiques store in Los Angeles's Chinatown. There, her grand-mother

and great-aunt told her intriguing, colorful stories about their family's past

\- stories of missionaries, concubines, tong wars, glamorous nightclubs, and

the determined struggle to triumph over racist laws and discrimination. They

spoke of how Lisa's great-great-grandfather emigrated from his Chinese village

to the United States; how his son followed him, married a Caucasian woman, and

despite great odds, went on to become one of the most prominent Chinese on

"Gold Mountain" (the Chinese name for the United States). As an adult, See

spent five years collecting the details of her family's remarkable history.

She interviewed nearly one hundred relatives - both Chinese and Caucasian,

rich and poor - and pored over documents at the National Archives, the

immigration office, and in countless attics, basements, and closets for the

intimate nuances of her ancestors' lives.