Oakland Chinatown
Oakland’s first Chinatown was settled by Chinese gold miners in the 1800s. The Chinese community in Oakland was relocated five times before being segregated to a designated “exclusion zone” in the current location of Chinatown in the 1870s. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, thousands of Chinese from San Francisco moved to temporary shelters in Oakland. Many stayed permanently. Zoning ordinances did not include Chinatown until 1931 when the newly created City Planning Commission designated the area as part of the light industrial zone.
Paper Wife/Son/Daughter
Paper wives, sons, and daughters used fraudulent documentations to immigrate to the United States. The practice rose in response to war and famine in China, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake in the United States. Purchased documents stated these immigrants were the blood relatives of Chinese Americans who had citizenships in the United States. This allowed individuals to immigrate to the United States to work, reunite with family, or start a business.
The fire after the earthquake destroyed most of the county records. Some men of Chinese descent living in San Francisco inflated the number of sons and/or daughters that they had residing in China. The cost for the documents was based on age—typically one hundred dollars per year. For example, $1,200 would be paid for a twelve-year-old.
Rickshaw
A light, two-wheeled hooded vehicle drawn by one person.
San Francisco Chinatown
A densely populated neighborhood in San Francisco that was the only area of the city where people of Chinese descent were permitted to own and inherit property. It borders the port of entry for Chinese workers who arrived starting in the mid-1800s for gold mining in the Sierra Nevada, building the intercontinental and other railroads, and farming in the California Delta.
Tien Wu
Worked as a translator as well as organizer with Donaldina Cameron at the Presbyterian Mission House in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Tongs
Chinese organized-crime gangs.
Transcontinental Railroad
More than three thousand male laborers were recruited by the Central Pacific Railroad Company to build the railroad between California and Utah. It was completed in 1869. Alexander Saxton, in The Army of Canton in the High Sierra, calculates that railroad companies paid Chinese labor two-thirds of what was paid to White workers.
Wong Kim Ark
Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco in 1873. After traveling to China, he was denied reentry to the United States as a citizen and was treated as a noncitizen. He challenged the government’s refusal to recognize his citizenship. His case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor, holding that the citizenship language in the Fourteenth Amendment encompassed the circumstances of his birth and could not be limited in its effect by an act of Congress.
In addition, a child of a citizen, even one born in China, also becomes a US citizen at birth. This decision established an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2014 by Roots and Shoots Photography
Laila Ibrahim spent much of her career as a preschool director, a birth doula, and a religious educator. That work, coupled with her education in developmental psychology and attachment theory, provided ample fodder for the stories in her novels, Paper Wife, Mustard Seed, and Yellow Crocus.
She’s a devout Unitarian Universalist, determined to do her part to add a little more love and justice to our beautiful and painful world. She lives with her wonderful wife, Rinda, and two other families in a small cohousing community in Berkeley, California. Her young adult children are her pride and joy.
Laila is blessed to be working full-time as a novelist. When she isn’t writing, she likes to take walks with friends, do jigsaw puzzles, play games, work in the garden, travel, cook, and eat all kinds of delicious food. Visit the author at www.lailaibrahim.com or at Facebook at www.facebook.com/lailaibrahim.author.
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