With you and to talk about your newbo book, mott steet bear i, such a wide amount of time and space it was really a riveting read it i truly enjoyed it and i am really looking forward to our conversation today. Guest thank you perpetually so great to be here with you. Host . Yeah, i would like to start by just simply asking about the Research Project itself being a historian i was fascinated by all the different kinds of thingsat you were lookg at, from the official records held in thes national archives, newspapers, census records, family photographs, all of it. And it sounded like from the way you described the process you basically have been researching the Family History for very long time. Maybe you could start by taking us back when you start to first think about writing a Family History of researching your Family History and what brought you there attractive sure absolutely. Thank you. I just want too say that mott street is about the impact of the chinese exclusion act laws. For generations of my family in new yorkswn chinatown as we landed out in the american west, then get a reverse migration across country before eventually landing in the same tenement Apartment Building in the heart of new york city on mott street dear it really is about my journey to understandd my family and then how i uncovered so much more. So youre absolutely right that this book goes back so far in terms of my own genesis as a young person growing up as a fifth generation chineseamerican in new york. I was estranged from my father, raised by a single mom so i didnt know my dads side of the family and yet i also i did know that i was a descendent and it proud dissented of a Chinese Railroad worker and so a lot of the stories that i heard growing up, they were not reflected in the history books that i read or the lessons that i was taught when i was in school. And so part of this book was to try to rectify the family stories with what i was learning. So to get back to your question about the research, i would say that the short i answer is thati started researching this book from 2015 onwards, like from 2015 onwards it was my soul project in actuality i have been collecting these stories ever a since i was a child. I am one of the desk at one of the first words i have heard was about my greatgreatgrandfather who worked on the nationson firt Transcontinental Railroad, which united the country after the civilso war. So there were those oral stories that i heard that were so compelling to me as a young person. But then therehe was the resear, to answer your research question, there was the research that happened as an adult. We can kind of take this in several stages because i know that some of the research that i did happens in the 90s in your local archive in new york which had its genesis as the history project, then became the Chinatown History Museum. And back in the 90s when i discovered that my grandfather who i did not know growing up because i was estranged from outside of the family, i knew from his obituary that he had an oral history at the museum. And allll the way back them i ws in search of the oral history. I did not get my hands all that oral history and tells them 20 something years later but i would love like to give a t to all of the many people who are working in local archives, particularly archives for marginalized communities where larger museums are not saving these important archives of individuals who have important stories to tell. If those young budding historians did not do that work back then, i dont think i couldve done, you know, significant sections of this book. So its a shout out to those folks, and a note that you as well used to work at that museum. Am i correct, professor . Host yeah. That was an amazing piece of this that was when i picked up the book and saw mott street as the title, i had a feeling i would be familiar with much of what you were talking about but i didnt realize how familiar i would be, at the oral history you talk about with your grandfather, poppa jim as we knew back then, something that actually did encounter when it is in the museum back then so when i started from 1980 to about, sorry, 1989 until about early 1990s maybe, the near chinatown history project i just said we became the Chinatown History Museum for a minute and that ite is now known as the museum of chinese of the american spirit thats an incredible intersection of lives and stories and research which i think thats what a lot of your book is about is these incredible intersections that until we dig into the you dont realize they are happening and youre having us crisscross across the country as much as staying on mott street in terms of unraveling this history. So just to get back to some of the Amazing Things you are telling us, so which grandfather is it that you knew had history that went back to the Transcontinental Railroad . Guest so this was through my grandpa jean, jean long, was the amazing family who cooked up amazing meals for us and he told me incredible stories about our railroad ancestor. The railroad was so important to our family, not just because of the work that was accomplished that help bridge this divide between east and west, so that come from coasttocoast the country was united physically, but within our own family, there was so much pride about the fact that my greatgreatgrandfather had worked and labored, and labor was so intense, right . So many men died, so many chinese men gave up their lives, right, to complete this railroad. And my greatgreatgrandfather survived, and there was so much pride in the story that he taught his grandson, my grandfather, his first words in english, which were the names of the Transcontinental Railroad. So those are some of the first family stories that i ever heard. And i found them nothing short of inspiring. In my research i did go back to where the railroad was completed in utah. I also went to boise, idaho, where my railroad working ancestor ended up living for almost 30 years and a period of time in which the state population of idaho was almost 30 chinese. So you know, uncovering these stories was so personally moving for me, but it also spoke to something larger that was happening in the u. S. At the time. That sparked my imagination, but also made me realize that there was a great big gaping hole in terms of the history that i was taught. And if i wasnt taught this history as a young child, i might not have really known about it if i was just going about my business being a student. Host t we are going to break away briefly from this booktv program to keep her over for your commitment to covering congress as we take you live now to the floor of the u. S. Senate where lawmakers are holding what we believe will be a brief session. No votes are expected. The presiding officer the senate will come to order. The clerk