Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Chapter One: "What WE Didn't Understand": A History of Chinese Death Ritual in China and California Chapter 3 Chapter Two: On Dying American: Cantonese Rites for Death and Ghost-Spirits in an American City Chapter 4 Chapter Three: Archaeological Excavations at Virginiatown's Chinese Cemeteries Chapter 5 Chapter Four: Venerate These Bones: Chinese American Funerary and Burial Practices as Seen in Carlin, Elko County, Nevada Chapter 6 Chapter Five: Respecting the Dead: Chinese Cemeteries and Burial Practices in the Interior Pacific Northwest Chapter 7 Chapter Six: Remembering Ancestors in Hawai'i Chapter 8 Chapter Seven: The Chinese Mortuary Tradition in San Francisco Chinatown Chapter 9 Chapter Eight: Old Rituals in New Lands: Bringing the Ancestors to America

About the Author

Sue Fawn Chung is an associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is an advisor to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a member of the NTHP's Diversity Council, and an advisor to Preserve Nevada, the statewide preservation organization. She serves on the Board of Museums and History for the state of Nevada. Her fields of specialization are late Qing history and Chinese American history. She has published numerous studies on Chinese Americans. Priscilla Wegars is the founder and volunteer curator of the University of Idaho's Asian American Comparative Collection, a repository of artifacts and documentary materials essential for the study of Asian American archaeological sites, economic contributions, and cultural history. She edited Hidden Heritage: Historical Archaeology of the Overseas Chinese (1993) and wrote Polly Bemis: A Chinese American Pioneer (2003) and 'Polly Bemis: Lurid Life or Literary Legend?' in Wild Women of the Old West, edited by Glenda Riley and Richard W. Etulain (2003).

Reviews

In this book, eleven historians and anthropologists combine to give the broadest and most nuanced coverage to date of Chinese American death rituals. Recommended. * CHOICE *
This volume contains a number of invaluable reports of archaeological findings on Chinese death-ritual practices in America in the 19th and 20th centuries. It looks at the migration history of the overseas Chinese from a special angle, and sheds new light on our understanding of the living culture-through studying the dead-of the early Chinese sojourners in the West. * Journal Of Chinese Overseas *
Chinese American Death Rituals: Respecting the Ancestors is a valuable addition to the increasingly important subject of death ways. This highly readable work should be of tremendous interest to archeologists, ethnographers, folklorists, landscape historians, cultural geographers, and architectural historians. -- Jeffrey L. Durbin * The Journal Of Heritage Stewardship, Winter 2009 *
"A brand-new look at [Chinese American] history. At times it sneaks up on the reader and positively enthralls." * The Asian Reporter *