About the author
Beth Lew-Williams is a historian of Asian American migration, violence, and the American West at Princeton University. Her research shows how local expulsions and racial terror helped shape federal exclusion and the legal category of the alien.
In 1885 and 1886, at least 168 communities across the American West drove out their Chinese residents. Beth Lew-Williams reconstructs these expulsions not as scattered prejudice at the edge of national history, but as organized violence with consequences for law, diplomacy, and the meaning of belonging in the United States.
Where to start
Start with The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America. A history of anti-Chinese expulsion in the American West shows how local violence helped create national exclusion.
