Strangers in the Land

A NEW YORKER ESSENTIAL READ | A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK | A TIME MUST-READ BOOK | A BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR | A KIRKUS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR | A TIME MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 | A NEW YORK TIMES NONFICTION BOOK TO READ THIS SPRING

“Strangers in the Land is more than a story of an immigrant group accepting a wretched fate. Luo wisely puts the human experience at the center of this narrative. . . . In the process, he restores a voice to the forgotten men and women who endured endless broadsides in their adoption of a new country. . . . It’s these people who animate the book, filling the pages with stories of endurance and hard-fought victories but also searing accounts of sorrow, violence and injustice. Along the way, Luo reveals something essential about America: Any democracy’s promises should be measured against the way it treats its most marginalized members. At once an indictment of how our nation failed that test before and a reminder of how some pushed back, Strangers in the Land deserves a place on the shelf beside other essential works of American history.” —The Washington Post

“You can’t paint a complete picture of America without [the story of Chinese Americans], and the New Yorker journalist Michael Luo tells it persuasively in Strangers in the Land, a granular account of Chinese migration to the United States. In an evenhanded style that yields neither a woke polemic nor a sanitized past, he traces the lives of immigrants to a country that actively drew them in and then tried to push them out. . . [The book] succeeds through its little biographies of individuals – a range of quirky and fascinating figures, both Chinese and white, who drive the narrative. . . [and offer] a view on the full complexity of American immigration.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Michael Luo’s important study reminds us that without such indemnities, any group—but particularly the most vulnerable among us—could find itself excluded or expelled.” —The Wall Street Journal

“In Strangers in the Land, Michael Luo has written a sweeping history that somehow feels intimate, a narrative of irrational bigotry and legal violence that somehow shines with hope. In a moment of anti-immigrant fever, this work arrives like a balm.” —Boston Globe

“Luo celebrates the vitality and persistence of Chinese Americans while lamenting feelings of precariousness that pervade even today. His chronicle adds a much-needed Asian and Pacific voice to primarily Eurocentric narratives of nineteenth-century immigration.” —Booklist (starred review)

“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)

“The scope of Luo’s book is massive and its recounting of history impressively detailed. . . . [Strangers in the Land] is a meticulous triumph of research and testimony, and its greatest strength is its attention to the individuals of this history—both known and unknown. . . . [The book] firmly asserts Chinese humanity in a history that has sought to exclude it. . . . With this book, Luo asks what makes a real American, ultimately demonstrating the ever-shifting goalposts of how to answer the question. . . . By bringing light to this history, Strangers in the Land suggests to Americans today that this [anti-Asian] political force is older, darker, and more enduring than we even know.” —Foreign Policy

“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

“A lavishly detailed, inspiring, and sometimes infuriating exploration of why a true sense of belonging remains elusive for so many Chinese Americans.” —Washington Independant Review of Books

“Sweeping. . . Amid the current paroxysms concerning immigration, diversity, and race, his history of earlier, often dismaying, confrontations and crises could not be more important.” —Harvard Magazine

“An impressive feat. . . Strangers in the Land is an important book.” —Rain Taxi

“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