Julia Flynn Siler

Mm. Donaldina Cameron is an important figure in Asian American history, though not without some tinges of white savior. She did have genuine relationships with her charges over the years, though, and tbh religiously motivated missionaries were certainly more helpful to the Chinese American community than the "economically anxious" politicians.

This did seem to meander a little bit towards the middle, as it initially seemed like this was going to be a biography of Donaldina Cameron and the history of the Mission House but expanded to include San Francisco Chinatown history of the period like Dr. Ng Poon Chew and his paper, and Arnold Genthe the photographer. Chapters were short- about 5 pages, including an image and really felt more like vignettes loosely in a theme together. Still, this is another book to teach people about the effects of Chinese Exclusion on American immigration policy and how it shaped our communities for the longest time. I shouldn't be surprised that not many people are as familiar with this period as they ought to be, but I have the familial connection of relatives who *did* come through via the merchant exception, and at least one paper son in my tree (I suspect others, but even though parties are long dead relatives still remain tightlipped over the whiff of illegality). I would've liked a tighter focus on the Mission House and its residents rather than an overview of Chinese American history, but again, if it's not history someone's already familiar with I can see how it's compelling.

Re: the title- "white devil" is a colloquialism I heard used to reference white people in general (baakgwai per wiki's romanization, which I guess more accurately is "white ghost") so I'm not sure if it was an epithet towards Ms. Cameron in particular, but it does make for an eye-catching title.

Given there is an Ah Toy in the Cinemax show Warrior (albeit maybe a decade or two younger than the real Ah Toy was at the time), I feel like we're going to see a fictionalized version of Cameron sooner rather than later.… (more)

between 2 and 2.5 stars. this was good for general history, to get an idea of what really was going on when the white christians came to hawaii, up until annexation. it sometimes felt like she jumped from detail to detail, and the point got lost for me, and i also would really have liked a little more commentary and interpretation. i think she was being a journalist and trying to really just state the facts, but this is colonialization and it comes with judgement, which i would have liked to have seen more of. it also seems that some of her biography of lili'u was maybe different than what others have written, and i would like her to have addressed that. it's ok with me if she was a little biased (in favor) in her opinion of lili'u, but i'd like to know more about why, or why she dismissed some of what others have said.

"What happened to the Kingdom of Hawai'i was one of the most audacious land grabs of the Gilded Age, in which 1.8 million acres of land now worth billions of dollars was seized from native Hawaiians and claimed by American businessmen."

i think the ridiculous strictness of the puritans has finally started to be driven home when a story was related in which one of the reasons given for expelling someone from school was that he used an ampersand in a composition instead of writing out the word 'and.'

"Because Hawaiian history was passed down entirely through chants and stories until the first few decades of the nineteenth century, there are far more accounts available of the island kingdom written by foreigner travelers and missionaries in English than there are by native Hawaiians."… (more)