Ava Chin: "I was really looking for our stories."
How one woman searched for her family story in New York's Chinatown.
National Trust for Historic Preservation
Written by Priya Chhaya
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is working to support the preservation of America's Chinatowns. Sign our petition today to commit to the cultural preservation of America’s Chinatowns for future generations.
Photograph of Ava Chin (2010) by Tommy KhaNational Trust for Historic Preservation
Meet Ava Chin
"Hi, I am Ava Chin. I am a writer and a professor, and I'm the author of Mott Street. Mott Street is a book about the the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act laws on four generations of my family in New York's Chinatown as they tried to lay down roots in America."
Ava Chin is the author of Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming. This incredible family history takes readers through the tragedy and triumphs of both sides of her family whose secrets were a result of generations of exclusion in the United States. Hear about Chin's journey to learning about her own past, and how that story's place in New York's Chinatown underscores the importance of supporting and sustaining these communities.
"I first saw my father as a pair of feet in Italian leather"
bounding down the carpeted staircase of his office building, on one of the oldest streets in Chinatown...." (Excerpt from Mott Street.)
"His building, the Edward Mooney House—the only townhouse dating back to the American Revolution in all of Manhattan—was a short two-block jaunt from Mott Street that I had walked numerous times before, as a child on family outings, and later, as a young activist in the community."(Excerpt from Mott Street.)
Golden Spike National Historic Site (1980/2006) by Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Carol M. Highsmith [LC-DIG-highsm-13376]National Trust for Historic Preservation
First stories
"One of the first stories I ever learned was about my great, great grandfather's work on the Transcontinental Railroad. And then I started asking questions of my family members about our ancestors who came over."
"When I was in the sixth grade and I was learning about the building of our nation's first Transcontinental Railroad, and I saw the photograph in our textbooks that showed the completion of the railroad from the point of view of the railroad companies; there wasn't a wasn't a single Chinese face in that photograph. And I thought, what is this nonsense? What are they trying to tell us? And from that moment forward, I was really looking for our stories. I could not find them in the literature that I was reading as a child, or in the television shows that I was watching. So I was very determined that these stories come out."
Ava Chin: AC with Mom by Courtesy Ava ChinNational Trust for Historic Preservation
Growing up
"When I was growing up, I was raised by a single mother estranged from my father and his side of the family. The split between my parents was so great that neither one of them talked to each other except through their lawyers."
"So the great surprise for me when I started doing this research was to learn that in fact, both sides of my family had lived in the same building and not just had been neighbors, and had gone to the same schools, and been part of the same Boy Scouts and belonged to the same churches. But in fact, both sides of my family had been upstairs/downstairs neighbors from each other. So this was nothing short of a revelation, and it made me feel way more connected to the neighborhood as well, knowing that they had been neighbors and friends long before my parents had ever gotten together."
Ava Chin: 1937 Ng Doshim Family Portrait (1937) by Courtesy Ava ChinNational Trust for Historic Preservation
Answering questions
"All of these questions were the things that put me on this quest to trying to understand who we were as a family in relation to each other as Chinese Americans, and who we were in relation to this neighborhood and this community that came together in the late 19th century..."
"... largely as a place of refuge for Chinese people fleeing a lot of the anti-Chinese violence that happened out west. Then we were able to really find a home in this neighborhood, and particularly for my family, what I discovered was that both sides of my family lived in the same tenement apartment building in the heart of the community on Mott Street."
Ava Chin at Hong Kong University (2017) by Courtesy Ava ChinNational Trust for Historic Preservation
International and national search for my family members
"In the end, I really didn't have to go to China to research the family history. All I had to do was go down to Chinatown, to Mott Street, and I and I was able to collect and be connected to so many generations of my family history."
Ava Chin: Chin Brothers (1929) by Courtesy Ava ChinNational Trust for Historic Preservation
Filling in the gaps of my own knowledge about my own family
"I got so hooked on collecting these stories that these stories that told me something about who we were as individuals, but also who we were as a community, and really this legacy of what it means to be Chinese in America."
Tap to explore
When I think about Chinatown, I think about food
"I was born and raised in Flushing, Queens, which was a new Chinatown, right, but Manhattan's Chinatown was the place that my family went to buy ingredients for food, to eat, to see extended family members."
"... When I was a kid there were specific kinds of candies that we would eat. I was obsessed with San Rio and Hello Kitty, and so my family would allow me to buy stickers from the San Rio store. That's what I remember about Chinatown. It really was a place of community."
Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-05-06) by National Archives (5752153)National Trust for Historic Preservation
A place of mystery
"Actually, it was a place of a lot of mysteries as well, because the side of my family that I was disconnected from had been living there the entire time. It was both a very familiar place, but as well as the place of many secrets."
"I would only learn as an adult, what those secrets were based on and how necessary those secrets were, because the immigration policies long before I was born were so restrictive that people had to carry secrets with them in order to stay safe."
Scene in Lower Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood in New York City (2018) by Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Carol M. Highsmith LC-DIG-highsm- 51872 (ONLINE) [P&P]National Trust for Historic Preservation
Supporting and sustaining chinatowns
"I don't know that I would use the term preserved per se, but certainly America's Chinatowns absolutely need to be supported and sustained. They are vibrant, vital parts of our community."
"... You don't have to live in Chinatown in order for Chinatown to be important to you. There are people who live outside of Chinatown, but come over the weekends because they go shopping, or they see their friends, or they get connected with their extended family members. Chinatown is not just for the people who are actually living there or working there, Chinatown's for everybody."
Learn more about the National Trust for Historic Preservation's America's Chinatowns initiative.
Learn more about Ava Chin at avachin.com
About the author: Priya Chhaya is the associate director of content at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Cover and Excerpt of Ava Chin's Mott Street used with permission.
For More Information:
Tea That Burns: A Family Memoir of Chinatown by Bruce Edward Hall
Eat A Bowl Of Tea: A Novel of New York's Chinatown by Louis Chu
Racists kicked my Chinese ancestor out of America. He still loved the railroad he worked on. by Ava Chin
