 First edition | |
| Author | Ruthanne Lum McCunn |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | historical novel |
Publication date | 1981 |
| ISBN | 080708381X |
Thousand Pieces of Gold is a 1981 historical novel by Ruthanne Lum McCunn and based on the life of Polly Bemis, a 19th-century Chinese immigrant woman in the American Old West. In 1991, the novel was adapted into a film of the same name.
Lalu is the daughter of a Chinese farmer. When her father loses everything, Lalu finds herself thrust into debt slavery. Her misfortunes eventually take her to the Pacific Northwest. [1] [2]
McCunn first came across Lalu Nathoy's story when she was researching the lives of Chinese in Idaho for an earlier nonfiction book called An Illustrated History of the Chinese in America: [3]
I came across her story in a book called Idaho Chinese Lore by Sister Alfreda Elsensohn— it included just a few pages about her. But I immediately knew that I wanted to find out more about her and write an entire book about her because she brought out so many things about American history that we don't actually know about, generally, in this country. And also because, to me, she was such an extraordinary person in her own right. There are many people who survive incredible hardships, and she certainly did. But to survive with your capacity for compassion for other people intact and not to turn hard and bitter yourself is, to me, extraordinary. And that was what drew me to her and to want to find out more about her.
McCunn has said that Polly Bemis reminded her of her own great-grandmother who was also born in northern China and sold into slavery. After Thousand Pieces of Gold was published, she learned that her father, who had died when she was a girl, had met Bemis when he was a teenager working summer jobs as a fire watcher in Idaho. [4]
Idaho City is a city in and the county seat of Boise County, Idaho, United States, located about 36 miles (58 km) northeast of Boise. The population was 485 at the 2010 census, up from 458 in 2000.
After the Thin Man is a 1936 American murder mystery comedy film directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring William Powell, Myrna Loy, and James Stewart. A sequel to the 1934 feature The Thin Man, the film presents Powell and Loy as Dashiell Hammett's characters Nick and Nora Charles. The film also features Elissa Landi, Joseph Calleia, Jessie Ralph, Alan Marshal, and Penny Singleton.
Lue Gim Gong was a Chinese-American horticulturalist. Known as "The Citrus Wizard", he is remembered for his contribution to the orange-growing industry in Florida.
Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78 (1927), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the exclusion on account of race of a child of Chinese ancestry from a public school did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The decision effectively approved the exclusion of any minority children from schools reserved for whites.
Lucy A. Delaney, born Lucy Ann Berry, was an African-American woman, who when she was free was a seamstress, slave narrator, and community leader. She was born into slavery and was primarily held by the Major Taylor Berry and Judge Robert Wash families. As a teenager, she was the subject of a freedom lawsuit, because her mother lived in Illinois, a free state, longer than 90 days. According to Illinois state law, slaves that reside in Illinois for more than 90 days should be indentured and freed. The country's rule of partus sequitur ventrem asserts that if the mother was free at the child's birth, the child should be free. After her mother, Polly Berry, filed a lawsuit for herself, she filed a lawsuit on her behalf in 1842. Delaney was locked up for 17 months in a cold, damp, smelly jail while awaiting the trial.
Polly Bemis was a Chinese American pioneer who lived in Idaho in the late 19th and early 20th century. Her story became a biographical novel, and was the subject of the 1991 film Thousand Pieces of Gold.
McCunn is a surname, originating in Scotland but now widespread in many countries across the world.
The Kiriyama Prize was an international literary award awarded to books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia. Its goal was to encourage greater understanding among the peoples and nations of the region. Established in 1996, the prize was last awarded in 2008.
Judy Yung was professor emerita in American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specialized in oral history, women's history, and Asian American history. She died on December 14, 2020 in San Francisco, where she had returned in retirement.
Yiyun Li is a Chinese-born writer and professor in the United States. Her short stories and novels have won several awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award and Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, and the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End. She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.
Ruthanne Lum McCunn is an American novelist and editor of Chinese and Scottish descent.
Helen Catherine Knapp Markley Miller was an American writer of historical and biographical fiction for children taking place in the Western United States.
Polly Bemis House was the home of pioneers to Idaho County, Idaho, USA, Charles Bemis and his wife Polly Bemis, who lived alongside the Salmon River in the late 19th and early 20th century. Polly was a Chinese American former teenage slave whose story became a biographical novel and was fictionalized in the 1991 film A Thousand Pieces of Gold.
Thousand Pieces of Gold is a 1991 Western film starring Rosalind Chao, Chris Cooper, Dennis Dun and Michael Paul Chan, and is directed by Nancy Kelly. The film is based on a novel of the same name.
Alice Bemis Taylor was a philanthropist and was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2010.
Quartzburg is an unincorporated town in Boise County, in the U.S. state of Idaho.
Nkechi Amare Diallo is an American former college instructor and activist known for presenting herself as a black woman despite having been born to white parents. The name "Doležal" is of Czech origin. In addition to falsely claiming black ancestry, she also falsely claimed Native American descent. She is also a former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter president.
Prince Romerson was a Union Army soldier of Native Hawaiian descent. One of the "Hawaiʻi Sons of the Civil War", he was among a group of more than 100 documented Native Hawaiian and Hawaii-born combatants who fought in the American Civil War while the Kingdom of Hawaii was still an independent nation.
Kong Tai Heong was a trained obstetrician who was the first Chinese woman to practice medicine in Hawaii. Also certified as a midwife, she delivered babies for the Hawaiian, Portuguese and Chinese populations in Honolulu, practicing for over fifty years. In 1946, she was credited by Robert Ripley as having delivered more babies than any other private practitioner in the United States.
Mary Li Sia was a Chinese-American teacher and cookbook author, called "the Julia Child of Hawai'i" for her long and visible career teaching and writing about Chinese food.