Former RSF visiting scholar Mae Ngai has been awarded a 2022 Bancroft Prize for her book The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics. The Bancroft Prize is awarded to authors of distinguished works in American History or Diplomacy. This year’s jury stated that, “The Chinese Question brilliantly shows us how much of the white Anglo-American world came to view the Chinese as racially unassimilable and threatening people,” and how this view helped create “a race theory that shaped the development of global capitalism, prompted exclusionary immigration policies, and haunts us still.” The Chinese Question is the first book of Asian American history to be recognized with the Bancroft Prize.

Mae Ngai is Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies, Professor of History, and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. She was a visiting scholar at RSF in the 2020-2021 academic year.

Read more and purchase a copy of The Chinese Question.
Read the full announcement.
Read the New York Times review.
Learn more about RSF’s Visiting Scholar program.