Born in 1937 in Macon, Georgia, we were the only Chinese family in the city and we ran a laundry above which were our living quarters. After our family moved to San Francisco in the early 1950s to live among Chinese, I majored in psychology at U. C. Berkeley and went on to earn a Ph.D. at Northwestern University before starting a 40 year career as a professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach.
As I entered retirement, I began to think about writing a memoir about the unique and challenging lives that our family had living in the segregated South where we were isolated from other Chinese. The book, "Southern Fried Rice," was well-received and eventually I wrote three more books about the experiences of Chinese immigrants and their families who operated their own businesses such as laundries "Chinese Laundries: Tickets to Survival on Gold Mountain," grocery stores "Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton: Lives of Mississippi Delta Chinese," and restaurants "Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants," all over the U. S. and Canada.
I found these stories were inspiring examples of how these immigrants overcame difficult circumstances and achieved success that provided for their families, here and back in China. The goal of my books has been to help record and preserve these stories of the contributions of the Chinese to American history.