A social history of the role of the Chinese laundry on the survival of early Chinese immigrants in the U.S.during the Chinese Exclusion law period, 1882-1943, and in Canada during the years of the Head Tax, 1885-1923, and exclusion law, 1923-1947. Why and how Chinese got into the laundry business and how they had to fight discriminatory laws and competition from white-owned laundries to survive. Description of their lives, work demands, and living conditions. Reflections by a sample of children who grew up living in the backs of their laundries provide vivid first-person glimpses of the difficult lives of Chinese laundrymen and their families.
About John Jung
Born in Macon, Georgia, where his immigrant parents from China, the only Chinese in the city, owned a laundry. After moving to San Francisco in 1952, he majored in psychology at U. C. Berkeley and went on to earn a Ph.D. at Northwestern University. Author of several academic textbooks, including a second edition in 2010 of "Alcohol, Other Drugs, and Behavior," he was a Professor of Psychology at California State University, Long Beach for 40 years. Upon retiring, he created a new career in writing 4 books on the history of Chinese immigrants and their family-run businesses such as laundries, grocery stores, and restaurants. He has made almost 50 book talk presentations all over the country to pay tribute to these pioneers.
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