This panel brings together two authors to discuss new books that provide interdisciplinary perspectives on the development of Los Angeles Chinatown. Drawing on historical and ethnographic methods, authors William Gow (Ethnic Studies, CSU Sacramento) and Laureen Hom (Political Science, Cal Poly Pomona) illuminate the complex dynamics around community formation, spatial politics, performance, and representation that have shaped one of the largest, yet most under-researched, urban Chinatowns in the United States.

In Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community (Stanford University Press, 2024), William Gow offers a social-cultural history of LA's Chinatown’s relationship to Hollywood during the era of immigration exclusion and restriction. Focusing on the 1930s and 1940s, he chronicles how seemingly everyday Chinese Americans leveraged performance opportunities both in Chinatown and in the background of Hollywood films to negotiate understandings of race and national belonging. His book draws on more than forty oral histories and more than a dozen archival and family collections while bridging methodologies from community history and film studies.

Complementarily, in The Power of Chinatown: Searching for Spatial Justice in Los Angeles (University of California Press, 2024), Laureen D. Hom examines contemporary contests over development and gentrification in LA's Chinatown since the 1970s. Her ethnographic study analyzes how Chinese Americans have attempted to build community power through place-based organizing and the implications of that organizing for political representation and community formations for Chinatown. Her work brings together critical geography, urban studies, and political science frameworks.

Together, these new books provide interdisciplinary insights into Chinatown as a dynamic site of community formation, cultural representation, and spatial politics across the 20th and 21st centuries. Moderated by Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (UC Irvine), this panel will discuss the synergies between historical and contemporary perspectives on LA Chinatown while reflecting the conference's goal to reexamine and remap Asian American Studies across disciplines, time periods, and regions.