"Find Miss Sigel dead in truck" -- "Terra incognita": mapping Chinatown's racial and gender boundaries in lower Manhattan -- Beyond Chinatown: policing Chinese American male mobility in New York City -- Policing urban girls' and women's mobility and desires -- Playing the "missionary game" -- Chinese American interracial couples and families in New York City -- "The most remarkable get-away in police history" -- "Disgrace on the whole body of our people."
Summary
"In the summer of 1909, the gruesome murder of nineteen-year-old Elsie Sigel sent shock waves through New York City and the nation at large. The young woman's strangled corpse was discovered inside a trunk in the midtown Manhattan apartment of her reputed former Sunday school student and lover, a Chinese man named Leon Ling." "Through the lens of this unsolved murder, Mary Ting Yi Lui offers a fascinating snapshot of social and sexual relations between Chinese and non-Chinese populations in turn-of-the-century New York City. Sigel's murder was more than a notorious crime, Lui contends. It was a clear signal that attempts to maintain geographical and social boundaries between the city's Chinese male and white female populations had failed."
"Through her thorough re-examination of this notorious murder, Lui reveals in unprecedented detail how contemporary politics of race, gender, and sexuality shaped public responses to the presence of Chinese immigrants during the Chinese exclusion era."--Jacket
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 277-292) and index
