As the daughter from a Chinese American Takeout restaurant family, I did not major in Chinese American studies. Instead, I double majored in Chinese history and Chinese language, continued my Chinese history education, then chose Archives and Library and Information Science as my career path. I grew up craving for my family’s culture like many children of immigrant parents do. For me, the stories told by first-generation Chinese immigrants (first generation born and raised in the United States) resonated with me because I can relate to their experiences of generational trauma. The stories of Chinese immigrants who fought to make a permanent living in America has helped me reflect on the experiences of my immediate family and how their sacrifices enabled me to carve my place in America and New York City. This project allowed me to reflect on relationships between different immigrant communities, delve further into historical circumstances that brought people like my family to the United States.
David Ludden, Director of The New York Center for Global Asia and History Professor at New York University, also encouraged me to challenge my lifelong assumptions about Chinese American Takeout experience, instead viewing my upbringing and background, as well as those who permanently immigrated to America along a similar pathway through an analytical framework that empowers and gives voices to immigrants and minorities in New York City.
The Family in the Chinese American Takeout Restaurant project’s methodology was to find willing participants through my personal kinship network. I took an inductive approach by exploring questions raised by interviewees and through data-collection. As the interviewer, I participated in each interviewee’s intimate storytelling. At times, I encouraged interviewers to elaborate on intriguing points. Outside of the interviews, I approached likely candidates, asking for interviews, scheduling and recording interview sessions, asking for additional records to build a fuller picture, digitizing records, and then built contextualizing components to illustrate the insightful nature of the primary sources on display. The idea for building a WordPress website was influenced by my experience working on a virtual Omeka exhibit at the Oskar Diethelm Library for Internship Seminar. I transferred my digitization, processing, and metadata-input skills from my archival background to enhance this project. As a graduate student in the Archives and Public History program at New York University, I understood the significance in which records are preserved and which narrative is selected. As a member of this community, an essential objective of the Family in the Chinese American Takeout Restaurant website is to portray, as accurately as possible, the untold stories of immigrant families working in the labor-intensive food business serving dishes that are foreign to people from China to fulfill their American dreams.
All interviewees are Chinese Americans living in New York City and they hold unique perspectives on the importance of the Chinese American Takeout business to sustain specific Chinese immigrant families in the United States. All participants permanently reside in Brooklyn, New York City. While the project did not anticipate a Brooklyn-based demographic, because the project found participants through my personal extended network, it is not surprising that all the participants I gathered also live in Brooklyn like I do.
Aside from describing the mission and importance of the Chinese American Takeout restaurant website, I am grateful everyone trusted this project, shared personal experiences as immigrants, Chinese fast food restaurant workers, New Yorkers, and Chinese Americans.