Scan barcode
A review by jeffburns
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe
5.0
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream. Patrick Radden Keefe. Anchor, 2010. 414 pages.
A couple of years ago, I had never heard of Patrick Radden Keefe, but he has quickly become one of my favorite journalists/nonfiction authors. The Snakehead is a riveting look at Chinese illegal immigration into the US and the thriving Chinese criminal underworld that runs Chinatowns across the country.
The focus is on Cheng Chui Ping, known as Sister Ping, who ran a large human smuggling operation from 1984 to 2000 from New York's Chinatown on the Lower Eastside. On the surface, she worked 14-16 hour days running a notions store and restaurant catering to her fellow immigrants from Fujian Province, China, but she quickly became the most respected and loved snakehead, or human smuggler, in the business, and a multimillionaire. It is said that she emptied whole villages in China, bringing them to the US in arduous journeys of months or years. The US government finally caught up with her around 1990, but it took a decade to end her empire.
American immigration policy has always been complicated, flawed, even broken and corrupt. This book captures all that but still leaves the reader questioning what can be done. Leave it to politicians? Honestly, can you name a problem politicians have ever solved?
I highly recommend reading all of Keefe's books.
A couple of years ago, I had never heard of Patrick Radden Keefe, but he has quickly become one of my favorite journalists/nonfiction authors. The Snakehead is a riveting look at Chinese illegal immigration into the US and the thriving Chinese criminal underworld that runs Chinatowns across the country.
The focus is on Cheng Chui Ping, known as Sister Ping, who ran a large human smuggling operation from 1984 to 2000 from New York's Chinatown on the Lower Eastside. On the surface, she worked 14-16 hour days running a notions store and restaurant catering to her fellow immigrants from Fujian Province, China, but she quickly became the most respected and loved snakehead, or human smuggler, in the business, and a multimillionaire. It is said that she emptied whole villages in China, bringing them to the US in arduous journeys of months or years. The US government finally caught up with her around 1990, but it took a decade to end her empire.
American immigration policy has always been complicated, flawed, even broken and corrupt. This book captures all that but still leaves the reader questioning what can be done. Leave it to politicians? Honestly, can you name a problem politicians have ever solved?
I highly recommend reading all of Keefe's books.