Ann Elizabeth Chan, Full Interview
Collection: This recording is part of the Queens Memory Collection at the Archives at Queens Library: Ann Elizabeth Chan and is available in digital audio.
Description: Ann Elizabeth Chan was born in Hong Kong in 1935. She immigrated to America with a foster family who settled on White Plains Road in the Bronx, where her foster parents opened up a laundromat and operated other entrepreneurial ventures including a Chinese restaurant. Ann describes her childhood as a constant struggle between hard work and making ends meet. Her mother's sudden death as a teenager pushed her into adulthood. Ann married an engineer Howard "Howie" Chan and moved from the Bronx to Long Island with her younger brother. Their struggles continued as their new family faced racist housing covenants that restricted their upward mobility. Ann persevered eventually graduating vocational school and working under the United States Mission to the United Nations. She talks considerably about her friends in the Chinese and Chinese American communities and how their relationships have strengthened each other.
Chinese Americans; Emigration and immigration; Chan, Ann Elizabeth
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