Dr. Edgar Wickberg Book Prize for the Best Book on Chinese Canadian History
This prize is to recognize an important book pertaining to Chinese Canadian history published in the calendar year or previous year of the annual prize presentation. The prize will be decided annually, with the possibility of more than one book being recognized in a given year.
Extended Deadline: April 15, 2024 (including all supporting documentation)
Extended Deadline: April 15, 2024 (including all supporting documentation)
general information
The Dr. Edgar Wickberg Book Prize for the Best Book on Chinese Canadian History is administered and adjudicated by a committee appointed by the Board of Directors of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC. Chaired by a CCHSBC board member, the committee is responsible for determining which nominees will be recognized with a prize. The prize may not necessarily be awarded every year.
This award is named after Dr. Edgar Wickberg, Founding President of CCHSBC, and the most important historian in helping develop Chinese Canadian history in British Columbia. As the Founder of CCHSBC, Dr. Wickberg brought together scholars, community researchers, educators, and a broad array of people interested in promoting research and education, as well as creating and protecting historical collections, about Chinese Canadian history and heritage. As a professor of history at the University of British Columbia from 1969 to 1992, Dr. Wickberg also taught and mentored generations of students and researchers who helped build the field of Chinese Canadian historical studies, generously and selflessly supporting their work.
In recognition of the important role Dr. Wickberg played in the shaping and building of the field of Chinese Canadian studies, the Prize for the Best Book on Chinese Canadian history has been named in honour of Dr. Edgar Wickberg.
This award is named after Dr. Edgar Wickberg, Founding President of CCHSBC, and the most important historian in helping develop Chinese Canadian history in British Columbia. As the Founder of CCHSBC, Dr. Wickberg brought together scholars, community researchers, educators, and a broad array of people interested in promoting research and education, as well as creating and protecting historical collections, about Chinese Canadian history and heritage. As a professor of history at the University of British Columbia from 1969 to 1992, Dr. Wickberg also taught and mentored generations of students and researchers who helped build the field of Chinese Canadian historical studies, generously and selflessly supporting their work.
In recognition of the important role Dr. Wickberg played in the shaping and building of the field of Chinese Canadian studies, the Prize for the Best Book on Chinese Canadian history has been named in honour of Dr. Edgar Wickberg.
Who can make nominations?
Nominations may be made by publishers, members of the public, or any member of CCHSBC.
Do I need to send a copy of the book?
Yes. Nominations are to be accompanied by three copies of the book for the use of the adjudication committee. These reading copies may be in electronic form, and may be publication proofs accompanied by evidence of a firm future publication date.
2018 Prize Winners - Mary Chapman & Laura Madokoro
Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism, and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton, introduced by Mary Chapman - When her 1912 story collection, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, was rescued from obscurity in the 1990s, scholars were quick to celebrate Sui Sin Far as a pioneering chronicler of Asian American Chinatowns. Newly discovered works, however, reveal that Edith Eaton (1865-1914) published on a wide variety of subjects - and under numerous pseudonyms - in Canada and Jamaica for a decade before she began writing Chinatown fiction signed “Sui Sin Far” for US magazines. Born in England to a Chinese mother and a British father, and raised in Montreal, Edith Eaton is a complex transnational writer whose expanded oeuvre demands reconsideration.
Becoming Sui Sin Far collects and contextualizes seventy of Eaton’s early works, most of which have not been republished since they first appeared in turn-of-the-century periodicals. These works of fiction and journalism, in diverse styles and from a variety of perspectives, document Eaton’s early career as a short story writer, “stunt-girl” journalist, ethnographer, political commentator, and travel writer. Showcasing her playful humour, savage wit, and deep sympathy, the texts included in this volume assert a significant place for Eaton in North American literary history. Mary Chapman’s introduction provides an insightful and readable overview of Eaton’s transnational career. The volume also includes an expanded bibliography that lists over two hundred and sixty works attributed to Eaton, a detailed biographical timeline, and a newly discovered interview with Eaton from the year in which she first adopted the orientalist pseudonym for which she is best known. Becoming Sui Sin Far significantly expands our understanding of the themes and topics that defined Eaton’s oeuvre and will interest scholars and students of Canadian, American, Asian North American, and ethnic literatures and history.
Becoming Sui Sin Far collects and contextualizes seventy of Eaton’s early works, most of which have not been republished since they first appeared in turn-of-the-century periodicals. These works of fiction and journalism, in diverse styles and from a variety of perspectives, document Eaton’s early career as a short story writer, “stunt-girl” journalist, ethnographer, political commentator, and travel writer. Showcasing her playful humour, savage wit, and deep sympathy, the texts included in this volume assert a significant place for Eaton in North American literary history. Mary Chapman’s introduction provides an insightful and readable overview of Eaton’s transnational career. The volume also includes an expanded bibliography that lists over two hundred and sixty works attributed to Eaton, a detailed biographical timeline, and a newly discovered interview with Eaton from the year in which she first adopted the orientalist pseudonym for which she is best known. Becoming Sui Sin Far significantly expands our understanding of the themes and topics that defined Eaton’s oeuvre and will interest scholars and students of Canadian, American, Asian North American, and ethnic literatures and history.
Elusive Refugees by Laura Madokoro - The book traces why the development of humanitarian rationale in the 1940s for the creation of the category of "refugees" and "displaced persons" did not fundamentally alter the racially exclusionary immigration policies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and South Africa. By tracing the role of humanitarian NGOs in pushing for new openings in immigration policy, Madokoro also reveals how bureaucracies and state offices set up to exclude Chinese and other Asian immigrants were able to find ways of keeping Chinese refugees out. Not until the Sino-Vietnamese Boat People of the late 1970s did Canada and the other countries allow non-white refugees in significant numbers. By detailing the one exception in Canada, the 100 Chinese refugees allowed into the country in 1962 (one of whom grew up to be Jim Chu, Vancouver's Chief of Police), Madokoro shows how the door was kept closed to Chinese by not allowing those fleeing China to be classified as refugees. Having done research in Library Archives Canada that only a former archivist who had seen files not open to the public, Madokoro exposes a hidden history of how Canada and other white settler nations quietly maintained a contradictory approach to humanitarian refugee policy that did not challenge white supremacy.
2019 Prize Winner - Ann Hui for chop suey nation: The legion cafe and other stories from canada's chinese restaurants
In 2016, Globe and Mail reporter Ann Hui drove across Canada, from Victoria to Fogo Island, to write about small-town Chinese restaurants and the families who run them. It was only after the story was published that she discovered her own family could have been included—her parents had run their own Chinese restaurant, The Legion Cafe, before she was born. This discovery, and the realization that there was so much of her own history she didn’t yet know, set her on a time-sensitive mission: to understand how, after generations living in a poverty-stricken area of Guangdong, China, her family had somehow wound up in Canada.
Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurants weaves together Hui’s own family history—from her grandfather’s decision to leave behind a wife and newborn son for a new life, to her father’s path from cooking in rural China to running some of the largest “Western” kitchens in Vancouver, to the unravelling of a closely guarded family secret—with the stories of dozens of Chinese restaurant owners from coast to coast. Along her trip, she meets a Chinese-restaurant owner/small-town mayor, the owner of a Chinese restaurant in a Thunder Bay curling rink, and the woman who runs a restaurant alone, 365 days a year, on the very remote Fogo Island. Hui also explores the fascinating history behind “chop suey” cuisine, detailing the invention of classics like “ginger beef” and “Newfoundland chow mein,” and other uniquely Canadian fare like the “Chinese pierogies” of Alberta. Hui, who grew up in authenticity-obsessed Vancouver, begins her journey with a somewhat disparaging view of small-town “fake Chinese” food. But by the end, she comes to appreciate the essentially Chinese values that drive these restaurants—perseverance, entrepreneurialism and deep love for family. Using her own family’s story as a touchstone, she explores the importance of these restaurants in the country’s history and makes the case for why chop suey cuisine should be recognized as quintessentially Canadian. |
Chop Suey Nation have garnered various award attention, including: Honor Title at the 2019-2020 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in the Adult Non-Fiction Category; winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Award in Chinese Cooking and Food Writing Category, and most recently has been shortlisted for the International Association of Culinary Professionals' 2020 Cookbook Awards.
2020 Prize Winner
2021 Prize Winner - Dr. David R. Gray for DEEP AND SHELTERED WATERS: THE HISTORY OF TOD INLET
Author Dr. Gray tells for the first time to complex story of Chinese and Sikh immigrant workers who lived and worked in Tod Inlet near Victoria, BC. The book follows these labourers - including 239 Chinese males - as they helped construct a new cement plant for Robert Butchart's Vancouver Portland Cement Company, and the Chinese workers' major role in construction, development, and maintenance of the world-famous Butchart Gardens. This work describes the previously unknown personal experiences of these men and is a major contribution to Chinese Canadian history in BC.
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