Princeton scholar shortlisted for Candir History Prize
Literary Hub published an excerpt from Princeton historian Beth Lew-Williams’s John Doe Chinaman, a Harvard University Press study of anti-Chinese racial law in the American West drawn from 33 archives, shortlisted for the 2026 Cundill History Prize.
The American literary website Literary Hub has published an excerpt of Beth Lew-Williams’s new book, *John Doe Chinaman : A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Race Laws*. Published by Harvard University Press in 2026, the book is shortlisted for the 2026 Cundill History Prize. The author previously wrote *The Chinese Must Go*. She points out that long before and after the first anti-Chinese laws, Chinese immigrants faced not only the challenges of entering and leaving the country, but also the entire racial system within the United States. The book explores this system and the lives it impacted. Chinese immigrants arriving in California in the 1850s entered a “young nation with a long tradition of white dominance.” Western states, territories, and municipalities subsequently enacted anti-Chinese laws, regulating Chinese work, business, property ownership, court appearances, education, and family formation. The author argues that these laws conceal unspoken violence; moreover, many of these laws failed to withstand resistance from the Chinese community.
To uncover these buried stories, Lou Williams visited 33 archives in California, Oregon, and Washington, examining local legal records and finding a wealth of almost unused Chinese legal documents, including criminal prosecutions, civil suits, prison and inmate records, and Chinese court testimonies dating back to the 19th century. These testimonies offer a unique perspective on daily life in the American West, particularly for Chinese women and girls for whom almost no written records exist, in periods and regions where academic research has yet to find Chinese accounts. She also points out that Chinese testified often with the assistance of English interpreters and guidance from white lawyers, and discriminatory testimony laws prevented Chinese from speaking in most trials for decades. The book’s seven chapters revolve around prevalent stereotypes of the time—”coolies,” “criminals,” “outsiders,” “Chinese women,” “invaders,” “predators,” and “immigrants”—examining the various regulations derived from and reinforced by these racial myths.
Source: Literary Hub