Yin & Yang Press

 My 2005 memoir, Southern Fried Rice. describes what it was like growing up in the Deep South as part of the sole Chinese family in our town where we ran a laundry during a time before the end of Jim Crow laws.  A second book, Chinese Laundries, was a social history of Chinese laundries all over the U. S., and Canada.  Family-run grocery stores was the subject of a third book,  Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton,  which focused on the history of Chinese in the Mississippi Delta. A fourth book, Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants, examined the history and development of family-run Chinese restaurants throughout the U. S. and Canada. 

This new ' writing career' following my retirement after 40 years as a psychology professor was due not to a master plan, but to such a  highly unlikely fortuitous series of happy encounters and contacts.  The latest book in 2014: A Chinese American Odyssey, describes this journey that led me, quite unexpectedly, to write these four books and give talks about them around the country over the past decade.

      My books blend history and psychology to focus on the life experiences of Chinese immigrant families from southeastern China that engaged in self-employment businesses such as laundries, groceries, and restaurants from the late 1800s until past the middle of the last century. Their struggles against substantial obstacles and how they dealt with them must be recognized, admired, and recorded because they paved the way for later generations of Chinese to have a better life.