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Exploring the multifaceted Chinese experience in New York City, Xinyang Wang persuasively illustrates that economic forces more than racism influenced immigrantsAI life decisions. Wang argues that rather than being passive victims, Chinese were economic actors making rational choices for survival. Wang shows why, in the first half of the century, Chinese continued to live in white neighborhoods despite severe discrimination, why they retained their group loyalties even at the expense of fighting discrimination, and why they chose not to join the established labor movement. The author traces the rise of an enclave economy in the 1950s, which led more Chinese to take up residence in Chinatown, loosen the bonds of regional and kinship networks, and unionize. Erasing long-standing stereotypes, this innovative study brings the Chinese American experience into mainstream immigrant history.