After a 40 year career as a Professor of Psychology, I pondered a question that I had avoided many times, namely, how did I, as a second-generation Chinese American fit in a black and white society in Macon, Georgia, where our family, the only Chinese in town, operated a laundry during the years before the civil rights era.  My attempt to understand how my ethnic identity emerged led me to write a memoir "Southern Fried Rice: Life in A Chinese Laundry in the Deep South."I soon realized from responses of readers and audiences when I gave book talks/signings all over the U. S. that here was an important story to preserve and share. Others shared that they too grew up in cultural isolation where they were the only Chinese people in their communities and/or they also grew up helping in their parents' laundry.
     I never aspired to write more than one book about Chinese Americans, but in the course of doing research to further my understanding of how and why my parents ended in Georgia, and how they were treated, I was inspired to write 3 additional books, all exploring how Chinese immigrants from the late 1800s until beyond the middle of the past century managed to overcome the hostile societal prejudices against Chinese and other "Orientals" and succeed running family businesses such as laundries, grocery stores, and restaurants.