Huping Ling

Huping Ling is a professor of history at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. She is noted for her many contributions to the history of Asian Americans.

Education and Career

Ling graduated from Shanxi University, Taiyuan, Shanxi, PRC, with her bachelor's degree in 1982. She was first in her class. She earned her master's in 1987 at the University of Oregon, and completed her Ph.D. at the University of Miami (1991).

Dr. Ling has been teaching at Truman since 1991 and served as the Convener (department chair) for the school's history department from 2004 to 2006. She is a visiting professor for Jinan University (Guangzhou, China) and for Central Normal University (Wuhan, China). She serves as a consultant to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of Guangdong Provincial Government.

She currently serves as the Executive Editor of the Journal of Asian American Studies. She is fluent in Chinese, English and can read Japanese.

Research and Awards

Dr. Ling's research focuses on Asian American studies including immigration and ethnicity, assimilation and adaptation, family and marriage, feminism, employment patterns, and community structures. A prolific author, she has published ten books and over hundred articles in the field. She has earned numerous rewards for her work, including the Allen Fellowship for Faculty Excellence (with a prize of $10,000) from Truman in 2005-2006. She won the Ford Foundation Award for her book, Jinshan Yao: A History of Chinese American Women.

Publications

Books and Reviews

Surviving on the Gold Mountain: A History of Chinese American Women and Their Lives (The State University of New York, 1998). ISBN: 10-0791438643. Surviving on the Gold Mountain is the first comprehensive work on Chinese American women’s history covering the past 150 years. Relying on archival documents (many of which have never been used) oral history interviews, census data, contemporary newspapers in English and Chinese, and secondary literature. It unearths am unknown page of Chinese American history—the lives of Chinese immigrant women as wives of merchants, farmers, and laborers, as prostitutes, and as students and professionals in nineteenth-and twentieth-century America.

Chinese St. Louis: From Enclave to Cultural Community (Temple University Press, 2004). ISBN-10: 1592130399

The first empirical and comprehensive study on a Midwest Asian American community, it reconstructs the history of Chinese Americans in St. Louis from the mid-19th century to the present. Drawn upon evidence from archival manuscripts, census data, media reports, oral interviews, and mortuary records, it portrays the saga of a Chinese American community from a Chinatown centered around “Hop Alley” to a “cultural community,” a community without physical boundaries but identifiable through active community organizations and cultural activities, as defined by the author.

Ling’s cultural community model has been warmly received by the academic community. Dr. Ronald H. Bayor, editor of The Journal of American Ethnic History, praises that “Huping Ling provides a well-documented account of the development of a cultural community among Chinese Americans in St.Louis. The book offers an insightful history of the relatively unstudied Midwestern urban Chinese and provides a model for understanding other Chinese as well as non-Asian American communities.” Dr. Roger Daniels, Charles Phelps Taft Emeritus Professor of History at University of Cincinnati and a prominent pioneer scholar of Asian American studies, comments that “Huping Ling’s study of Chinese St. Louis is a breakthrough volume, the first full-scale study of the ethnic group in a Midwestern American city. Only by examining the evolution of such smaller communities can the full scope of the Chinese diaspora in America be understood.” Dr. Franklin Ng, president of the Association of Asian American Studies, notes that “Chinese St. Louisans provides a much-needed addition to the published literature about Chinese Americans. It skillfully places the Chinese in St. Louis in the context of urban history and the Chinese American historiography. Ling’s presentation of the cultural community’ is important as it will help to further thinking about Chinese communities that are not in the form of traditional Chinatowns. It is a wonderful study, rich with insight and sophistication.”

It has also been warmly embraced by the St. Louis community. It has been featured in The World Journal (Jan. 15, 2006), the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Feb. 2, 2005), West End Word (Feb. 4, 2005), St. Louis Chinese American News, St. Louis Chinese Journal ,the Overseas Chinese World, River Front Times, and appeared at “Charles Brennan Show” KMOX 1120, “Voice of St. Louis” (Feb. 4, 2005) and KWMU 90.7 (NPR in St. Louis) “St. Louis on the Air” (July 5, 2005). It is considered as a classic work on Asian communities in the St. Louis area, having been consulted with in numerous discussions on racial relations in St. Louis. The most recent example is Bill McClellan’s article “Let’s Go back to the Future at Ballpark Village Site” on the front page of Metro section, March 31, 2008 issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which cites the book and the commentary article she wrote for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to advocate a revival of Chinese business at the ballpark Village site.

It has been acknowledged as a groundbreaking work on Asian American community in the Midwest. An article derived from it, “Reconceptualizing Chinese American Community in St. Louis: From Chinatown to Cultural Community” (Journal of American Ethnic History Vol. 24, No. 2 Winter 2005), won the Best Article Award at the 48th Annual Missouri Conference on History in 2006. Dr. Ling's involvement in and service to the St. Louis Asian American community has won her the inclusion as one of the most significant Chinese Americans by the St. Louis Chinese American News (2001). Dr. Ling has been invited to give numerous presentations and book signings at schools, libraries, and communities nationally and internationally.

Voices of the Heart: Asian American Women on Immigration, Work, and Family (Truman State University Press, 2007). ISBN: 9781931112680.

In this volume fifty-five oral history interviews of Asian American women selected from over three hundred interviews tell the heartfelt stories about their journeys to America, their aspirations, their strives in education and employment, their family life, their cultural heritage, and their senses of identities.

Chinese in St. Louis: 1857-2007. Arcadia Publishing, 2007. Pp. 128. ISBN: 13-978-0-7385-5145-6. This photographic history book explores the history of Chinese Americans as they settled in St. Louis for better lives and the obstacles they faced during that challenge. Highlights of Chinese in St. Louis: 1857-2007: Unfolds the story of the old Chinatown in St. Louis: Hop Alley Reveals the rich ethnic heritage and diversity of the Mount City Tells the story of the earliest Chinese immigrants in midwest America Highlights key landmarks of the ethnic community in St. Louis

《金山謠–美國華裔婦女史》中國社會科學出版社﹐1999年﹐ 該書獲美國福特基金出版獎。 Jinshan Yao: A History of Chinese American Women. Beijing: Chinese Social Sciences Publishing House, 1999. A winner of 1998 Ford Foundation Award for publication in the American Study Series by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. ISBN: 7-5004-2504-X.

萍飄美國–新移民實錄》山西北岳文藝出版社﹐2003。 Ping Piao Mei Guo: New Immigrants in America. Shanxi, China: Beiyue Literature and Art Publishing House, 2003. ISBN: 7-5378-2504-1.

Anthologies

Emerging Voices: the Experiences of Underrepresented Asian Americans (Rutgers University Press, 2008). ISBN: 10-0813543428 Emerging Voices: Experiences of Underrepresented Asian Americans is a pioneering interdisciplinary work. It explores the life experiences of the smaller or less studied Asian American groups: Burmese, Hmong, Indonesians, Kashmiri, Laotian, Mong, Romani, Thai, and Tibetan. Unlike the earlier and larger groups of Asian immigrants to America, many of whom made the choice to emigrate to seek better economic opportunities, many of the groups discussed in this volume fled war or political persecution in their homeland. Forced to make drastic transitions in America with little physical or psychological preparation, questions of “why am I here,” “who am I,” and “why am I discriminated against,” remain at the heart of their post-emigration experiences. Bringing together eminent scholars from a variety of disciplines, this collection considers a wide range of themes, including assimilation and adaptation, immigration patterns, community, education, ethnicity, economics, family, gender, marriage, religion, sexuality, and work.

Asian America: Forming New Communities, Expanding Boundaries. Rutgers University Press, 2009. ISBN-10: 0813544874, ISBN-13: 978-0813544878

Asian American History and Culture: An Encyclopedia (2 volumes, M.E. Sharpe, 2009, lead co-editor)