John Jung

Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton: Lives of Mississippi Delta Chinese Grocers John Jung

The story of how a few Chinese immigrants found their way to the Mississippi River Delta in the late 1870s and earned their living with small family-operated grocery stores in neighborhoods where mostly black cotton plantation workers lived. What was their status in the segregated black and white world of that time and place? How did this small group of Chinese preserve their culture and ethnic identity?  Chopsticks in the Land of Cotton is a social history of the lives of these pioneering families and the unique and valuable role they played in their communities for over a century.