Creating New Archives: Engaging Communities in Expanding the Public Record for Historical Research

My dissertation argues that twentieth-century Chinese restaurant workers created and maintained transnational infrastructures that made possible the mass consumption of Chinese food in North America. This project challenged me to work through a significant dilemma: the scarcity of historical records on restaurants or Chinese immigrants and, especially, on Chinese restaurants. Since no ideal archive exists for me, I decided to create my own by using four techniques. First, I learned about and gained access to the private materials of families who ran restaurants with the expressed hope they will deposit them in the public trust. Second, I expanded the documentary record of my topic by interviewing restaurant workers and sharing those interviews publically. Third, I helped make records already in the public trust accessible by interning at ethnic history museums to process major collections. Finally, in search of broad data points in which to contextualize these qualitative materials, I turned to immigration service, military, and immigrant aid organization records, which, given the broad scope of governmental interest in Chinese affairs, contain information on the work and migration histories of the Chinese. With these four strategies, I am refining a methodology for researching populations silenced by conventional collecting practices and creating a record of these communities’ past. My approach connects scholars with communities and invites the public to participate in academic conversations, thereby bridging historic town-and-gown divides and creating a sense of mutual investment. Through this work, I gain access to sources that I use to establish differences in the work and migration experiences of  propertied migrants and lifelong restaurant employees. In so doing, I highlight the class-based division of labor that was critical to the twentieth-century expansion of the Chinese food industry.