For Ava Chin, All Roads Lead to Mott Street Book Beat

    

Her father’s absence when she was growing up made half of Ava Chin’s family history a family mystery. But when she finally met him in Chinatown, in her twenties, it sparked a years-long quest that not only uncovered her own family’s remarkable story but revealed the much deeper history of exclusion that defined the Chinese American experience for a century.  Chin, a professor of creative nonfiction and journalism at the CUNY Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, tells a deeply personal story with the sweep of history in Mott Street: A Chinese Amerian Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming.”