Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming
Ava Chin
Penguin Books: 2024
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In 2017, after US President Donald Trump’s first inauguration, sales of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism spiked. By the end of the year, the book was selling at sixteen times its normal rate.

“Never has our future been more unpredictable,” Arendt wrote in the preface to the first edition. “Never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries… This is the reality in which we live.”

This January, when President Trump was inaugurated for a second time, that reality returned. This time, it was fuelled by the nihilistic visions of a tech billionaire and accelerated by Trump’s second-term familiarity with state institutions and the halls of power. He declared a “national emergency” at the southern border, allowing for the deployment of troops. He suspended the nation’s refugee admissions programme, forcing applicants who’d already been approved for relocation to cancel travel plans. He authorised Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to deport 1.4 million people who’d been allowed legal entry to the country. He greenlit the reinstatement of an “expedited removal” policy that allows ICE power to deport people without a hearing.

• Tags: Ava Chin, Carolyn Nash, China, Issue 39, Reviews