Chinatown: Most Time, Hard Time

by Chalsa Loo

Overview

In this significant scholarly contribution to the study of ethnic minorities, Chalsa Loo documents a distinctive American community—Chinatown, San Francisco. Based on an interview survey of residents of Chinatown, Loo's study tests prevailing psychological and sociological theories, and ultimately dispels stereotypes about Asian Americans, replacing them with empirically derived realities of American life. Chinatown: Most Time, Hard Time comprehensively covers a range of significant areas of life, integrating several disciplines and combining the rigor of scientific analysis with the richness of individual experience through the use of photographs and personal vignettes.

This valuable analysis serves as a model of comprehensive, quantitative multidomain interview sample survey research. It provides data on the major domains of life for all Americans, but particularly for ethnic Americans: neighborhood, crowding, health, mental health, employment, language and cultural barriers, quality of life, and differences between men and women. This book is scholarly yet readable, and will be particularly useful to social scientists, educators, researchers, human service professionals, and policy planners.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275938932
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/30/1991
Series:	Literature; 32
Pages:	386
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.88(d)
Lexile:	1320L (what's this?)

About the Author

CHALSA M. LOO is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Clinical Psychologist at the Veterans Administration in Honolulu. She has also been Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz and Visiting Associate Professor at the Asian American Studies Research Center at UCLA. She has published widely on ethnic and mental health issues—publishing over 30 professional articles. Dr. Loo was the principal investigator for the research grant that funded this Chinatown study and was founder of the Chinatown Housing and Health Research Project. She was the 1991 recipient of the Distinguished Contribution Award presented by the Asian American Psychological Association.

Table of Contents

Researching Ethnic Minority Populations
Heartland of Gold: A Historical Overview (by Chalsa Loo and Connie Young Yu)
The Nature of Community and Desired Residential Mobility
Neighborhood Satisfaction: Development versus Preservation
Crowding: Perceptions, Attitudes, and Consequences
Language Acquisition, Cultural Shift, and the English-Only Movement (by Chalsa M. Loo with Paul Ong)
Pulse on Chinatown: Health Status and Service Use
"Too Bloated with Misery to Eat a Salted Bean": Mental Health Status and Attitudes
Slaying Demons with a Sewing Needle: Gender Differences and Women's Status
"Fook, Look, Sow": Quality of Life (by Chalsa Loo and Don Mar)
Conclusion
Appendices: The Interview Schedule
The Research Method and Sampling
References
Index