The Making of Asian America: A History. By Erika Lee. Simon & Schuster; 528 pages; $29.95, £19.77.

IN NOVEMBER 1834, hundreds of New Yorkers paid 50 cents to look at Afong Moy. Moy, the first Chinese woman to arrive in America, was imported by Nathaniel and Frederick Carne, who hoped that her presence would make the shawls, backgammon boards, fans and other Chinese goods that the brothers were selling seem even more alluring. There she sat, her feet bound and her skin pale, from 10am to 2pm and then again from 5pm to 9pm, day after day, the performance occasionally enlivened when the living mannequin picked up chopsticks or spoke Chinese. Whether this marketing ploy was a success was not recorded; neither was Ms Moy’s later fate. After she was taken off display she toured the east coast, met Andrew Jackson in the White House and then vanished into obscurity.

Her tale is both unusual and, in some ways, typical of the story of early Asian America. Compared with immigration from Europe and forced migration from Africa, Asian migration to America began relatively late, after people from other places had already written rules to protect their own. It was built on false hope—the majority of migrants from China, Japan and Korea came as indentured labourers, expecting something more lucrative than the plantation work that awaited them. The 20,000 Chinese who set out for California in 1852 referred to their destination as “Gold Mountain”. Many ended up working in laundries.

Despite this, many of these immigrant tales seem to have ended happily. The history of Asian America is, ultimately, a story of opportunity seized; of America’s promise to newcomers fulfilled. Even so, if readers pick up Erika Lee’s book expecting to read nothing more than a proud chapter in the nation’s history they will quickly be corrected.

One of Ms Lee’s recurring themes is the parallel experience of African- and Asian-Americans, starting with the long, dangerous journey across the ocean. The rate at which Chinese coolies sailing to Cuba died on the way rivalled the 20% mortality rate suffered by African slaves during the Middle Passage (though in absolute terms the numbers were much lower). Though never enslaved, Asian labourers were treated harshly: according to a contemporary estimate, at least 1,200 died building the transcontinental railway. In 1871, 17 Chinese were lynched in Los Angeles after a policeman was shot (though not killed) by a Chinese resident, the bloodiest single episode of mob justice in the country’s history. Koreans who arrived in California in the 1920s found themselves refused service in restaurants and barber shops and forced to sit in segregated areas in movie theatres.

This analogy with black history provokes a question which Ms Lee, a professor at the University of Minnesota, prefers to avoid. American universities tend to discriminate in favour of African-Americans, a practice justified in part with reference to the unique awfulness of the first three centuries of black history: the humiliation and violence of slavery, the unjustness of Jim Crow and the subsequent herding of fugitives from the South into ghettos in northern cities. But positive discrimination for one group necessarily means taking away from another one, a cost which, in the Ivy League at least, is often paid by Asian-Americans. (See article.)

If it were possible to calculate a quantum of misery, then black America would surely come out on top. But when reading about episodes such as the bombing of the Filipino Federation of America building in Stockton, California, in 1930 by a group of white youths, the distinction tends to blur.

Asian-Americans rightly resist the notion that their success, measured by educational attainment and income, proves that anyone who does not make it in America is a loser. But the puzzle of Asian overachievement, which fascinates and occasionally alarms American parents of all hues, merits more attention than it gets here. For various reasons, immigrants from China, Japan and Korea have thrived in America, outshining groups descended from other ancestors. Yet the Hmong, who arrived in the 1970s and 1980s, by contrast, have struggled. After 400 pages, the reasons why this is so remain mysterious.