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Often ignored in the historical writing of Los Angeles, the Chinese community has a reach history. In his book, The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the massacre of 1871, author Scott Zesch attempts to bring the history to life. Going into this book with no background on the Chinese community in Los Angeles, I was anxious. The last time I read a book on a subject I was unfamiliar with, I found myself lost. But Zesch did a great job in providing enough background material that I felt familiar with the history before he jumped into the Massacre event. He writes like a novelist, and from David Bierne’s comments of his history as an historical novelist, it answers the question that I had in that regard.
The book was interesting in that Zesch brought together the overall community within his telling of the story. The interactions of the Chinese community and the inter-racial relations that occurred in Los Angeles at the time were truly unique. Zesch spent much of his time reading between the lines in his quest to find out what occurred during the Massacre in 1871. His use of trial transcripts and newspaper articles helped him in determining what occurred in reality and what was said to occur. I really like how he was able to tell a mostly complete story with the use of these sources, which he notes in the beginning of his book were terribly incomplete.
I did have a couple of issues with the book. His novelistic style did not sit to well with me in the telling of this story. It seemed there was a lot of jumping back and forth in the story telling, he often wrote the phrase “as has been told/described” or “as we will see later/in a later chapter.” This spoke of a knowledge that he might be confusing his reader and makes one wonder why he didn’t feel the need to streamline his writing into a more comprehensible style.
Another issue I found was his portrayal, or lack of portrayal of the women in this Chinese community. In his effort to give them a voice, it seemed that he made them straight pawns with little or no agency within their own lives. One story that stands out is obviously the woman who might have very well began the massacre, Yut Ho. He tells the story of her “kidnapping” her eventual return and subsequent re-kidnapping. He comes to conclusions in the story that I find hard to follow by looking at his sources. He very definitely comes down on one side of the event but never mentions or even questions in his narrative, the feelings of the woman at the center of the controversy. He does this over and over in the telling of stories that involve women, they become a prop for his story telling. While it is understandable that there would be no documentation regarding the women’s feelings, it is odd that he never even questions where Yut Ho would rather spend her life.