Asian American Motherhood Has Always Been Political

From the 1875 law barring Chinese women's entry to facing police brutality, Asian American mothers have always fought to build families in a country that questions their right to belong.

My mother’s green card from 1987

On August 24, 1874, Chy Lung stood on the deck of the steamship Japan, watching San Francisco's harbor come into view. After a long, arduous journey from China, she was ready to disembark and begin her new life. What she couldn't have anticipated was becoming one of twenty-two Chinese women detained the moment they arrived—all labeled "lewd and debauched" without a shred of evidence. Immigration officials presented an impossible ultimatum: pay a $500 bond per woman (an astronomical sum at the time) or face immediate deportation.

Lung had arrived in the United States at the peak of anti-Chinese sentiment when women often bore the brunt of xenophobic policies. Just four years earlier, in 1870, California had passed an immigration statute requiring East Asian women to provide "satisfactory proof" of their "good character" and confirm they were "traveling of their own free will"—scrutiny applied to no other immigrant group. Officials were particularly fixate…