Review of Strangers in the Land by Michael Luo

*Strangers in the Land* by Michael Luo (2025). Published by Doubleday.

If you’re new here and found this blog through the mysterious powers of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I’m a dedicated reader and movie watcher who thought to turn this website into a little digital archive of sorts.

I was watching and reading so much that I wanted to keep track of it all, so I began blogging as a way to keep these books as memories somewhat forever.

That said, I recently fell into a period of unemployment, and this blog was a solace for me. Not only was it a way to make a little bit of money when there was nothing else coming my way really, but I found, after getting my finances in order, that I enjoyed sitting down to write blog posts when I had nothing else to do in my day.

I’ve been dubbing this period as funemployment while I look for a job, but the job market isn’t looking too great right now. Regardless, I spend a lot of time in my local library, and because I am such a big fan of simple living, I enjoy the little moments where I can find a book for free here or there, while also supporting such a critical aspect of my community.

While I do love a good book from the library, being funemployed has led to another new discovery: I can finally catch up on all of the advance copies I receive! In the past I found myself inundated with advance copies, which led me to realize I need to be a bit more picky and choosy about what kinds of ARCs I was inviting into my life.

I decided to tackle my list of advance copies during this period, and I managed to get through a good portion of them! I tend to blog about most of the books I receive, if not all (I can’t recall any that I haven’t reviewed lately, but that could be my memory failing me here), as I want to put out what I thought about these books before I forget I even read them (hence why I started this blog to begin with).

As someone who specialized in Korean history in graduate school, I found that once I was out of the grad school environment I wanted to branch out more when it comes to the kind of history I wanted to learn about. While I do heavily admire people who specialize in a region, I could never see myself doing a PhD because I want to learn about everyone and everything.

I requested Strangers in the Land when one of the Instagrammers I follow who focuses on Asian diaspora literature posted about it. I didn’t save the post, but I wish I could send you guys to them! I can’t remember who it was, but I was intrigued by the synopsis they had posted about this book.

So I got an advance copy through NetGalley. Much love to the publisher and NetGalley for giving me an advance copy, as I flew through this while on a trip to California in March 2025.

Let’s get into the review!

The story of the Chinese immigrants in the United States, their resilience, and how their communities flourished.

I will say before diving into this review is that I thought I knew a solid chunk of Chinese American history. I was aware of the conditions in San Francisco and California when the Chinese first began arriving in the country, as well as the exclusion laws that purposely tried to push out the Chinese immigrants, among many other kinds of Asians.

I went into this book thinking I knew quite a bit, but I was prove wrong. Luo takes us directly into the world the Chinese immigrants were living within, beginning from when they first arrived in the United States. If you can’t handle depictions of violence, then there are going to be sections you’ll need to skip.

There are some pretty horrifying descriptions of what the white, and sometimes fellow BIPOC, did to the Chinese immigrants. From lynchings to cruel shootings, the story of the Chinese Americans in the beginning (and even to this day) is marked with resistance from their neighbors.

But there were people who did accept their neighbors, and offered kindness as well. These give hope for the world as a whole to me, especially as we see the Chinese Exclusion Act come into play and deem any Chinese immigrants as unable to truly be legally seen as United States citizens.

Among all of these stories, we see how Chinese students began coming to the United States in search of an education. And they succeeded, some going to the elite schools like Harvard and Princeton, proving that they could keep up with their white, elite peers, even if their poor rural parents back home didn’t understand

Gender also is something that Luo points out. Women and girls were taken in Southern China and brought to the United States for sex work, which became a major problem that caught the attention of advocates and the authorities. Which also created some harmful stereotypes about Chinese women in general, which didn’t help broader stereotypes that were feeding into Sinophobia.

Overall Thoughts

History books can be quite dense, but I found that Strangers in the Land was fairly accessible. Sometimes I find writers who convey history the best way for broader audiences are the ones who are able to connect the past in a narrative style that feels like a novel. Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warm of Other Suns is one of those books for me—she writes and presents the narrative in a way where it doesn’t feel like a history project.

I liked this book because of that, and found it easier to read due to this. I finished the book over the course of a week, which is pretty long for me, but pretty solid for a history book. Fiction books I can finish within two days if I have the free time, but history you need to take your time with.

All of this is to say that I think you should pick the book up if you find the topic and history interesting. As I mentioned before, I thought I knew this history, but I should’ve known better from my other deep dives on random subjects. You never truly know everything about the past, especially when we’re always uncovering new evidence and stories.

So go to your local library or indie bookstore to pick up your copy! I recommend this one for sure.

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