What you are seeing above is a photo of this newsletter’s editor on her Thanksgiving break. Just kidding! While I began the break feeling squirrelly, I ended it feeling rather less so. Whether or not you celebrated a holiday last week, I hope this newsletter finds you feeling more human than sciurine.

University Press Week was also earlier this month, and our Amanuensis section features an informative New York Times Opinion piece that marked the occasion. And in between that section and this, you’ll find—I trust—at least a few new ideas regarding the craft of biography and even an opportunity to further hone that craft.

The inbox, as ever, is open. Please send along any last-minute news updates you have for the December Insider.

Sincerely,

Holly

by Dona Munker

Some of us are curious enough about our family’s past to toy with the idea of writing a book about our ancestors’ struggles and triumphs. As a rule, however, few people have the drive or the sitzfleisch it takes to see such a project through and, sooner or later, the idea slips away.  

Ava Chin, an associate professor of English at the College of Staten Island, is a notable exception. At the virtual fall 2022 Dorothy O. Helly Works in Progress Lecture, presented by the Women Writing Women’s Lives Seminar and sponsored by the City University of New York Graduate Center, Chin described the genesis, research, and writing of a 400-page account of how her 19th- and 20th-century ancestors established themselves, despite native antagonism and vicious racism, as successful members of American society. Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming, will be published next spring by Penguin Random House.  

Chin herself is a fifth-generation Chinese American whose male forebears arrived in the American West in the 1860s to work on the transcontinental railroad. Eventually, both sides of the family settled in a tenement apartment building at the intersection of Mott and Pell Streets in New York’s Chinatown, with her maternal family upstairs and paternal line downstairs. Chin, who was raised by her single mother in Flushing (her parents were divorced and she didn’t meet her father until she was an adult), grew up “feeling like an anomaly” in her mostly Caucasian Queens community. Even in childhood, whatever she was able to learn of her Chinese American ancestry fascinated her. But her grandparents were inexplicably close-mouthed on the subject and, she explained, “I grew up surrounded by secrets. I had so many questions.”  

As a teenager, Chin collected stories and family photographs in scrapbooks, along with drawings and old family newspaper clippings, to construct what would turn out to be an embryonic prototype of the book she eventually wrote. In college, she read Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior; it seemed a kind of cosmic encouragement because “it was the book I had always wanted to write,” Chin said. But when she thought about writing a book herself from the material she had, the prospect was too daunting. For one thing, how would she find out more about her family? At that time, there were no major American institutions with records of ordinary Chinese immigrants, like her grandparents and great-grandparents; nor was she literate in Chinese. Then again, how would she ever encompass a subject at once so intimate and yet so vast? Years followed, and “Every time I asked myself if I had what I needed,” Chin told her listeners, “the answer was ‘No.’” 

Then serendipity intervened. In 2014–2015, Chin attended a New-York Historical Society exhibition, “Chinese-American: Exclusion/Inclusion,” and saw for the first time that the stories of people like her forebears could be presented against the context of the larger American social and political experience. Even more crucially, a reporter for the Yiddish-language newspaper The Daily Forward got in touch with her about an article he was writing on the efforts of the Chinese community in 1903 to raise money for Jewish survivors of the Kishinev Massacre. (Chin learned that a great-great uncle had been among the leaders of this group.) He told Chin that because of the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) had files on every Chinese person who entered or re-entered the United States, including American-born citizens of Chinese descent, between 1882 and 1943. NARA’s regional archives were scattered around the country, so Chin began traveling. Among the hundreds of thousands of files they contained were those of her grandparents and great-grandparents, as well as aunts, uncles, and cousins, with the names of their villages of origin in China and addresses in the United States.  

Chin soon came to understand the personal impact of the oppressive, degrading legislation that had created the laws. Like the Jews in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, the Chinese in America had to carry a special resident ID card at all times. It was difficult for young Chinese men to find work, and those who entered the country without papers needed an alias. Immigrating was especially hard for Chinese women, even those already married to residents. One of Chin’s great-grandmothers had entered the country legally, but her other great-grandmother had to be smuggled in. Any Chinese person who went or returned to China, for any reason, including those born in the United States and had American citizenship, risked being barred or deported. In the eyes of the bureaucrats from the Immigration Bureau who met the ships at San Francisco and Los Angeles, the Chinese they interviewed, photographed, and maintained files on could never be real Americans. “Sometimes,” Chin told her audience, “the archives themselves were so prickly and contained such vitriol against people who looked like me and my family” that she felt that “I had entered a landmine” and would “just shut down emotionally.” 

She persisted in her mission nonetheless. A colleague suggested that she join the Women Writing Women’s Lives Seminar, which includes memoirists as well as biographers, and in the course of some of the discussions she realized that she could “bring history alive through the stories of individuals;” this would enable her to “thread together decades of research into a single narrative.” She decided to restrict her account primarily to eight people—her great-grandparents, one great-great grandparent, her grandparents, her father, an uncle, and an aunt—and narrate their stories against the backdrop not only of the pai-hua but of the national events they went through together: the building of the railroad, the San Francisco earthquake, the Tong Wars, World War I, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the diphtheria epidemic of the 1920s, and World War II. However, she would tell the story not in the third person, but in the first, as she had originally planned. This was partly to give the narrative a single, guiding, unifying voice, but also because she wanted to be transparent about her point of view as a narrator, including her emotional reactions to the inaccurate, often fabricated, official records and the cruel newspaper stories. Readers, Chin said, needed to know how she had felt if they were to trust her as a narrator and feel assured that she was “being completely honest.”  

The key to the book was what she learned from interviewing family friends and relatives who had lived on Mott Street. Chin used these, together with material she had been assembling over the years, to put together unofficial oral histories she could draw on. One major triumph, she recalled, was when she was finally able to lay her hands on—“after 20 years of trying”—the taped recollections of her paternal grandfather, who converted his Chinatown store into a coffee shop. There were smaller triumphs as well, such as recovering thrilling details about daily life in Chinatown from such details as the recipes for foods her grandfather had served, like salt chicken and roast pig, and how he constructed the dirt pit in the basement in which they were prepared.  

The oral histories she compiled also enabled Chin to see what was missing from, or different from, the written accounts. Biographers, she pointed out, usually consider written records the most reliable sources, but in the case of the Exclusion law files, that rule “got turned on its head.” (“Reverse reliability,” Chin said.) Oral traditions that are handed down through generations also have far more power to illuminate the past and are thus of greater use to the family historian than biased written records. Knowing the names of the rural villages her ancestors came from, Chin went to China, taking along Chinese-speaking friends as translators, to visit some of them— “I zigzagged my way across the globe,” she joked—and interviewed the residents, in one case finding an old man who remembered one of her grandfathers.  

Asked how she feels about completing such a work at a time when anti-Asian racism is “terrifyingly resurgent,” Chin—who wrote the book in an apartment in the ancestral home on Mott Street—emphasized that she now considers it “all the more vital” to publish this “story of immigrant resilience” and show “what it means to be Chinese in America, through the intimate lens of my family on Mott Street.” Writing the book, she said, has been a “massive undertaking” but also “an eye-opening privilege. And I can’t wait,” she added with a smile, “to take you along on this journey.” 

You can view Ava Chin’s lecture here.

 

Dona Munker is the writer and co-author of Daughter of Persia: A Woman’s Journey from Her Father’s Harem Through the Islamic Revolution. She is currently immersed in the story of the West Coast suffragist and poet Sara Bard Field and her long “free-love” affair with the civil libertarian and poet C. E. S. Wood.   

In July 2020, after having to cancel BIO’s annual conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the BIO Board of Directors devised a way to convene BIO members virtually, creating small groups online, modeled after the in-person “Roundtables” that had long since become a conference staple. BIO Board member Anne Boyd Rioux coordinated the original Zoom “Roundtables” around several different topics: “Women’s Biography,” “Historical Figures,” “Literary Biography,” “Pop Culture,” “Group Biography,” “YA and Children’s Biography,” “Science,” and “Marginalized Lives.” Many of these groups are still going strong. In future issues of The Biographer’s Craft, we’ll share insights that different roundtables have gleaned over the course of their work together.  This month, The Biographer’s Craft caught up with Steve Paul, BIO’s secretary and the moderator of the “Literary Biography Roundtable.”

Comprised of 16 members, the Literary Biography Roundtable has been meeting every other Friday (and once a month in the summers) “rather vigorously” for about two years now, Steve Paul said. The energizing “conversation and congeniality,” Paul added, are likely the biggest draws for the group.  

“For me, it’s the only real reliable writing group that I belong to, so it has provided valuable feedback whenever we’ve workshopped, say, a chapter or proposal draft of mine. I think others feel the same way and gain confidence as their projects approach the proposal stage and beyond,” Paul explained.  

Most of this roundtable’s members are working on their first biographies. Their subjects are poets, fiction writers, playwrights, artists, and even a family biography/memoir. “So there are lots of cross-cultural conversations on craft and the malleable nature of biography,” said Paul. “We learn from one another and value the opportunity to climb out of our writer bubbles once in a while.” 

Paul mentioned that the group may have some space available if there are BIO members interested in joining. But he also said, “I would add that if anyone else were interested in starting and facilitating a similar group at a different time, on literary biography or any other topic, all it takes is a Zoom account and a willingness to gather a group and share.” 

In the New Year, BIO would like to get more “Roundtables” off the ground. If you are interested in leading a new BIO roundtable, or being a member of one, please reply to this email with the type of group you are interested in forming or joining. 

What is your current project and at what stage is it? 

My current project is a biography on Chief Justice Warren Burger, the longest-serving chief justice of the 20th century.  To date, no full-length biography has been written about the chief justice—primarily because his personal papers (1,400 linear square feet, with hundreds of photographs and multimedia materials) are under seal at William and Mary. The Burger estate has granted access to the papers to my co-author (former Burger law clerk Tim Flanigan) and I.  Our review of the papers will begin in earnest in May, when I start a one-year sabbatical. 

My oldest child and I just finished helping Russ Ford, former Virginia death row chaplain, write his biography. For about 15 years, Ford ministered to the men of Virginia’s death row, including walking into the death chamber with 24 condemned men. The book will be published in March of 2023, by the University of Virginia Press.
 

What person would you most like to write about? 

If the historical records existed, I would like to write about Harry Parker. He was a longtime messenger at the Supreme Court. Starting in the mid-19th century, every Supreme Court justice had a messenger. They did everything for the justices, from valet and barber to office assistant.  Parker worked for decades for Justice James Clark McReynolds. They had a fascinating relationship, fraught with tension, but McReynolds was utterly reliant on Parker. When Parker died, six Supreme Court justices attended his funeral, a clear sign of the respect Parker commanded at the court. While some primary and secondary materials exist re Parker and his life, they aren’t enough for a large project.  

Who is your favorite biographer or what is your favorite biography? 

Not an original answer, but David McCullough and [his] Truman. I have read it three times.  

What have been your most satisfying moments as a biographer? 

My previous biographies have been about important figures in the history of the death penalty. They included death row chaplains and volunteers, who devoted themselves to helping the men face death. These are individuals who never sought the spotlight, but whose stories are so important to tell. It gives me great satisfaction to be able to “introduce” them to readers and to celebrate their accomplishments.  

What have been your most frustrating moments?

As noted above, much of my work has focused on telling the stories of the men of Virginia’s death row. I’ve filed multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC), hoping to get access to inmate files. I’ve been routinely turned down, with the VDOC citing concerns about “institutional security.” This is an absurd excuse since my requests involve deceased individuals who were housed at prisons that no longer exist, but FOIA laws in Virginia are not favorable for journalists and historians.  

One research/marketing/attitudinal tip to share?

Obituaries. I have found more information from obituaries, including contact information for living family members, than from any other source.

If you weren’t a biographer, what dream profession would you be in, and why? 

I am a college professor at a small liberal arts college in Virginia. I am very blessed to be a teacher but also have the time to write. I’ve recently written a one-man play about Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., which is scheduled to be performed at the Supreme Court next year. I wouldn’t mind trying to write another play, although I don’t know if I really have the talent for it.  

What genre, besides biography, do you read for pleasure and who are some of your favorite writers? 

I read a lot of historical fiction. My favorite book is Gore Vidal’s Lincoln. 

 

Todd Peppers is a graduate of Washington and Lee University, the University of Virginia School of Law, and Emory University (Ph.D. in Political Science). He currently holds the Fowler Chair in Public Affairs at Roanoke College. For the last 14 years, he has also been a visiting professor of law at Washington and Lee. He is the author, co-author, editor, and/or co-editor of six books and approximately 20 articles on either Supreme Court history or the death penalty.