Alta Journal's Book Talk: On Gold Mountain

Host John Freeman will lead a free hour-long conversation with Author Lisa See, which will include a reading by her and questions from the audience. Joining them will be special guest Michael Luo, executive editor at the New Yorker and author of Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America. Produced by Alta Journal for streaming on Zoom.

In 1871, Lisa See tells us, her great-grandfather Fong See, then young, left China to seek his fortune on Gold Mountain—the United States. His father, an herbalist, and his brothers had already gone ahead. Two villagers lent Fong See money for the boat passage. He went on to make his fortune and take multiple wives, one a Pennsylvania Dutch woman, Letticie Pruett, who was the author’s great-grandmother. Ticie, as she was known, came to Fong See for a job at his factory that made and sold underwear and wound up improving the business. See spent her summers growing up in Los Angeles’s Chinatown with a huge extended family and a number of unanswered questions that were later answered through intensive research. On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family presses absorbing stories through the sieve of the history and laws, including anti-miscegenation laws, that excluded Chinese people from full belonging in California for generations. While the events the family went through are difficult, the vibrant, dramatic narrative is a pleasure to read; See’s dedication to painting her family’s resilience as vividly as its hardships shines through. This year, 2025, is the 30th anniversary of the book’s publication—celebrate this unforgettable epic of a Chinese American family’s assimilation.

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