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AMERICAN PAPER SON: A Chinese Immigrant in the Midwest By Wayne Hung Wang; edited and with an introduction by Benson Tong. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006. x, 162pp. (Photos.) US$29.95, paper. ISBN 0-252-07263-4.
This is a fascinating personal story of a Chinese immigrant. Wayne Hung Wong, whose real name is Mar Ying Wing, came to the United States in 1936. In spite of anti-Chinese immigration laws, this 13-year-old boy passed American immigration scrutiny as a son of an American citizen of Chinese descent. While his adolescent years were spent working in his father's restaurant and attending a local school in Wichita, Kansas, he served in the military and spent 18 months as a member of the US Army 987th Signal Operation Company in China during the second World War. Wong took advantage of the 1945 War Brides Act and brought back a wife he married while visiting his family in China in 1946. Continuing to work in restaurants, Wong,...