Review | China land protest leader’s pursuit of American dream a textbook story of immigrant grit
Book about Wukan land-grab protest leader Zhuang Liehong’s defection to US with his wife, their claim for political asylum and how they found a ready support network in a New York Chinatown shows how immigration works
Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown
by Lauren Hilgers
Penguin RandomHouse
3.5 stars
Immigration reform is a hot topic – particularly in the United States – but regardless of one’s position, it is surely in everyone’s best interests that immigrants succeed in their new homes. And one of the most effective paths to success is having a solid support system – such as a family – in a new land. Lauren Hilgers’s recently published book, Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown, addresses this topic and couldn’t have come at a more pertinent time.
Hilgers didn’t set out to write a book about immigration. As as a Shanghai-based reporter, she was more interested in the 2011 protests in Wukan, in Guangdong province, southern China, against land grabs by the local government, which in turn sold the farmers’ land to developers.