Asian Tragedies in the Americas: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Stories explores the stories of nineteenth-century East Asian migrants throughout the Americas, tracing the asymmetrical international conditions which shaped migrants’ experiences. Won K.Yoon examines such phenomena as Chinese paper (fraudulent) wives and daughters, Korean picture marriages, and Japanese war brides, analyzing the impact of racism and colonialism on East Asian groups and family experiences in the West.

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In recent years, scholars have written extensively about Chinese and Japanese labor migration and migrants' lives in the Americas. In this wide-ranging, insightful book, Yoon synthesizes some of this research into a single volume, including extensive coverage of Koreans and Asian women in particular. Descriptions of Chinese working on sugar plantations in Cuba and mining guano in the Chincha Islands of Peru complement the more well-known story of their compatriots laboring in the US. Interestingly, the exploitation in the Chincha Islands was so notorious that it moved even Karl Marx to write about the tragic situation. Koreans recruited for the henequen industry in Yucatan, Mexico, are contrasted with those in the sugar fields of Hawaii. Japanese who migrated to the US are compared with those who went to Peru and elsewhere, but the largest community outside Japan was located in Brazil. The effects of laws and immigration policy, WW II and its aftermath, picture brides, war brides, children of mixed ancestry, race relations, and the prospects for future immigration are also discussed. Recommended. General readers through faculty.