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Strangers in the Land

Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America

Author Michael Luo On Tour
Hardcover
$35.00 US
| $48.00 CAN
Doubleday Publishing | Doubleday
On sale Apr 29, 2025 | 560 Pages | 9780385548571
Grades 9-12 + AP/IB
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From New Yorker writer Michael Luo comes a masterful narrative history of the Chinese in America that traces the sorrowful theme of exclusion and documents their more than century-long struggle to belong.

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 (Time)

"A story about aspiration and belonging that is as universal as it is profound.”—Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing

"A gift to anyone interested in American history. I couldn't stop turning pages."—Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown

"What history should be--richly detailed, authoritative, and compelling."—David Grann, author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon

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 to a distant land they called Gum Shan­––Gold Mountain. Americans initially welcomed these Chinese arrivals, but, as their numbers grew, horrific episodes of racial terror erupted on the Pacific coast. A prolonged economic downturn that idled legions of white workingmen helped create the conditions for what came next: a series of progressively more onerous federal laws aimed at excluding Chinese laborers from the country, marking the first time the United States barred a people based on their race. In a captivating debut, Michael Luo follows the Chinese from these early years to modern times, as they persisted in the face of bigotry and persecution, revealing anew the complications of our multiracial democracy.

    Luo writes of early victims of anti-Asian violence, like Gene Tong, a Los Angeles herbalist who was dragged from his apartment and hanged by a mob during one of the worst mass lynchings in the country’s history; of demagogues like Denis Kearney, a sandlot orator who became the face of the anti-Chinese movement in the late-1870s; of the pioneering activist Wong Chin Foo and other leaders of the Chinese community, who pressed their new homeland to live up to its stated ideals.  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. The Chinese became the country’s first undocumented immigrants: hounded, counted, suspected, surveilled.

    In 1889, while upholding Chinese exclusion, Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field characterized them as “strangers in the land.” Only in 1965 did America’s gates swing open to people like Luo’s parents, immigrants from Taiwan. Today there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States and yet the “stranger” label, Luo writes, remains. Drawing on archives from across the country and written with a New Yorker writer’s style and sweep, Strangers in the Land is revelatory and unforgettable, an essential American story.
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 (Time)

"This book is a gift to anyone interested in American history. I learned something on every page. And I couldn't stop turning pages. Michael Luo has somehow synthesized two hundred years of history into a compelling narrative that manages to be comprehensive, illuminating, and deeply moving. I'll treasure this work and return to it often and I imagine many others will, too." --Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown, winner of the National Book Award

“This book is an astonishing feat of urgent history. Michael Luo has unearthed a buried chapter of America’s rise, in which Chinese immigrants fought their way through violence and scapegoating to build the nation’s future. But he illuminates much more than the past; Strangers in the Land reimagines how the idea of Asia reverberates in American culture today, pulled between belonging, rejection, success, and suspicion. A powerful new entry in the canon on American identity." --Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, winner of the National Book Award

"Strangers in the Land is what history should be--richly detailed, authoritative, and compelling. Luo pieces together the stunning and shocking story of a people's journey to this country, and in the process reveals an essential part of the story of America." --David Grann, New York Times-bestselling author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon

“An epic of both the best and worst aspects of the American experiment, Strangers in the Land is a work of history that is deeply researched, deftly written, and highly relevant today. In the vivid, often heartbreaking, and ultimately inspiring experiences of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans, Luo finds a deeper story about aspiration and belonging that is as universal as it is profound.” --Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times-bestselling author of Say Nothing

“This is not the story of a people being hated. This is the moving story of a people’s persistence and resistance — how individuals, families, and changing communities looked hard at rejection, endured violence, consumed daily bitterness, and yet sought the higher purposes of humanity and better lives. With profound feeling, clear narrative, and unyielding hope for a greater understanding, Michael Luo has written a definitive biography of the first Asians in America. Luo’s book serves as a witness of how powerful the love and aspirations of immigrants make real the most beautiful promises of a new homeland.” --Min Jin Lee, New York Times-bestselling author of Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko

“In Strangers in the Land, Michael Luo shines a bright light on the unwavering patriotism and determination that is the Chinese American legacy. By unearthing in intimate, empathic details US immigration law’s roots in Chinese exclusion, Luo writes into the record what history books and courses have long buried but what every Chinese American feels in their bones. This book has enriched my understanding of American law, of Asian American identity, and of my own sense of self. I cannot think of a human being who would not be bettered by reading this canonical work. Strangers in the Land is powerful, essential reading for us all.” --Qian Julie Wang, New York Times-bestselling author of Beautiful Country

“Tracing echoes of today's debates around immigration and exclusion to the past, Luo's vividly told, carefully researched, and deeply compassionate book is an essential contribution to the continually unfolding story of the Chinese in America.” --Hua Hsu, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Stay True

"Impressively researched and beautifully told, Strangers in the Land offers a new and much-needed history of a people and community that have always been central to the American story." -- Erika Lee, Bae Family Professor of History, Harvard University, and author of The Making of Asian America: A History

“The violent, terrible history of Chinese exclusion and xenophobia is told with feeling and expansive research. Michael Luo’s excellent recovery of this vital story is critical in this difficult time.” -- Gordon H. Chang, Professor, Department of History and Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities, Stanford University, and author of Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad

“Michael Luo’s new history of the Chinese in the U.S. is a book for our time, when anti-Chinese sentiment has again gripped American politics. In Luo’s masterful account, Chinese emigrants' and Chinese Americans’ stories and voices are front and center. They encountered and resisted racist harassment, violence, and laws from the California gold rush to today’s new gilded age. Shaping Chinese American communities and America at large, it is a story told with sensitivity and renewed urgency.” --Mae M. Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History, Columbia University, and author of The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics

“Giv[es] voice to the first Asian Americans. . . Narrative history[ies] of the Chinese experience in America [are], of course, legion. . . What distinguishes [Strangers in the Land] from the others, however, is that Luo’s book, though sweeping in scope, is also microscopic when it comes to stories. . . Readers interested in American history, not only Chinese American history, will savor these pages. An estimable and vital work of history that honors the Chinese American experience.” -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)


“A remarkable book. . . . Michael Luo. . . has taken a subject that most people of Chinese descent, like me, are aware of in a vaguely ominous way and turned it into a terrifying yet compelling narrative.” -- Bloomberg
© Elinor Carucci
MICHAEL LUO is an executive editor at The New Yorker and writes regularly for the magazine on politics, religion, and Asian American issues. He joined The New Yorker in 2016. Before that, he spent thirteen years at the New York Times, as a metro reporter, national correspondent, and investigative reporter and editor. He is a recipient of a George Polk Award and a Livingston Award for Young Journalists. View titles by Michael Luo

About

From New Yorker writer Michael Luo comes a masterful narrative history of the Chinese in America that traces the sorrowful theme of exclusion and documents their more than century-long struggle to belong.

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 (Time)

"A story about aspiration and belonging that is as universal as it is profound.”—Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing

"A gift to anyone interested in American history. I couldn't stop turning pages."—Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown

"What history should be--richly detailed, authoritative, and compelling."—David Grann, author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon

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 to a distant land they called Gum Shan­––Gold Mountain. Americans initially welcomed these Chinese arrivals, but, as their numbers grew, horrific episodes of racial terror erupted on the Pacific coast. A prolonged economic downturn that idled legions of white workingmen helped create the conditions for what came next: a series of progressively more onerous federal laws aimed at excluding Chinese laborers from the country, marking the first time the United States barred a people based on their race. In a captivating debut, Michael Luo follows the Chinese from these early years to modern times, as they persisted in the face of bigotry and persecution, revealing anew the complications of our multiracial democracy.

    Luo writes of early victims of anti-Asian violence, like Gene Tong, a Los Angeles herbalist who was dragged from his apartment and hanged by a mob during one of the worst mass lynchings in the country’s history; of demagogues like Denis Kearney, a sandlot orator who became the face of the anti-Chinese movement in the late-1870s; of the pioneering activist Wong Chin Foo and other leaders of the Chinese community, who pressed their new homeland to live up to its stated ideals.  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. The Chinese became the country’s first undocumented immigrants: hounded, counted, suspected, surveilled.

    In 1889, while upholding Chinese exclusion, Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field characterized them as “strangers in the land.” Only in 1965 did America’s gates swing open to people like Luo’s parents, immigrants from Taiwan. Today there are more than twenty-two million people of Asian descent in the United States and yet the “stranger” label, Luo writes, remains. Drawing on archives from across the country and written with a New Yorker writer’s style and sweep, Strangers in the Land is revelatory and unforgettable, an essential American story.

Reviews

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 (Time)

"This book is a gift to anyone interested in American history. I learned something on every page. And I couldn't stop turning pages. Michael Luo has somehow synthesized two hundred years of history into a compelling narrative that manages to be comprehensive, illuminating, and deeply moving. I'll treasure this work and return to it often and I imagine many others will, too." --Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown, winner of the National Book Award

“This book is an astonishing feat of urgent history. Michael Luo has unearthed a buried chapter of America’s rise, in which Chinese immigrants fought their way through violence and scapegoating to build the nation’s future. But he illuminates much more than the past; Strangers in the Land reimagines how the idea of Asia reverberates in American culture today, pulled between belonging, rejection, success, and suspicion. A powerful new entry in the canon on American identity." --Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, winner of the National Book Award

"Strangers in the Land is what history should be--richly detailed, authoritative, and compelling. Luo pieces together the stunning and shocking story of a people's journey to this country, and in the process reveals an essential part of the story of America." --David Grann, New York Times-bestselling author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon

“An epic of both the best and worst aspects of the American experiment, Strangers in the Land is a work of history that is deeply researched, deftly written, and highly relevant today. In the vivid, often heartbreaking, and ultimately inspiring experiences of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans, Luo finds a deeper story about aspiration and belonging that is as universal as it is profound.” --Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times-bestselling author of Say Nothing

“This is not the story of a people being hated. This is the moving story of a people’s persistence and resistance — how individuals, families, and changing communities looked hard at rejection, endured violence, consumed daily bitterness, and yet sought the higher purposes of humanity and better lives. With profound feeling, clear narrative, and unyielding hope for a greater understanding, Michael Luo has written a definitive biography of the first Asians in America. Luo’s book serves as a witness of how powerful the love and aspirations of immigrants make real the most beautiful promises of a new homeland.” --Min Jin Lee, New York Times-bestselling author of Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko

“In Strangers in the Land, Michael Luo shines a bright light on the unwavering patriotism and determination that is the Chinese American legacy. By unearthing in intimate, empathic details US immigration law’s roots in Chinese exclusion, Luo writes into the record what history books and courses have long buried but what every Chinese American feels in their bones. This book has enriched my understanding of American law, of Asian American identity, and of my own sense of self. I cannot think of a human being who would not be bettered by reading this canonical work. Strangers in the Land is powerful, essential reading for us all.” --Qian Julie Wang, New York Times-bestselling author of Beautiful Country

“Tracing echoes of today's debates around immigration and exclusion to the past, Luo's vividly told, carefully researched, and deeply compassionate book is an essential contribution to the continually unfolding story of the Chinese in America.” --Hua Hsu, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Stay True

"Impressively researched and beautifully told, Strangers in the Land offers a new and much-needed history of a people and community that have always been central to the American story." -- Erika Lee, Bae Family Professor of History, Harvard University, and author of The Making of Asian America: A History

“The violent, terrible history of Chinese exclusion and xenophobia is told with feeling and expansive research. Michael Luo’s excellent recovery of this vital story is critical in this difficult time.” -- Gordon H. Chang, Professor, Department of History and Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities, Stanford University, and author of Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad

“Michael Luo’s new history of the Chinese in the U.S. is a book for our time, when anti-Chinese sentiment has again gripped American politics. In Luo’s masterful account, Chinese emigrants' and Chinese Americans’ stories and voices are front and center. They encountered and resisted racist harassment, violence, and laws from the California gold rush to today’s new gilded age. Shaping Chinese American communities and America at large, it is a story told with sensitivity and renewed urgency.” --Mae M. Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History, Columbia University, and author of The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics

“Giv[es] voice to the first Asian Americans. . . Narrative history[ies] of the Chinese experience in America [are], of course, legion. . . What distinguishes [Strangers in the Land] from the others, however, is that Luo’s book, though sweeping in scope, is also microscopic when it comes to stories. . . Readers interested in American history, not only Chinese American history, will savor these pages. An estimable and vital work of history that honors the Chinese American experience.” -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)


“A remarkable book. . . . Michael Luo. . . has taken a subject that most people of Chinese descent, like me, are aware of in a vaguely ominous way and turned it into a terrifying yet compelling narrative.” -- Bloomberg

Author

© Elinor Carucci
MICHAEL LUO is an executive editor at The New Yorker and writes regularly for the magazine on politics, religion, and Asian American issues. He joined The New Yorker in 2016. Before that, he spent thirteen years at the New York Times, as a metro reporter, national correspondent, and investigative reporter and editor. He is a recipient of a George Polk Award and a Livingston Award for Young Journalists. View titles by Michael Luo

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