The Snakehead
An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream
New York : Doubleday, [2009]
Format: Book
Edition: First edition.
Description: xiv, 414 pages : map ; 25 cm
Cheng Chui Ping slipped into the United States in the early 1980s, part of a huge wave of Chinese immigrants hoping to realize the American Dream. Her path to that dream began with an underground bank for illegal immigrants run out of a noodle shop in New York City's Chinatown. She became known as Sister Ping and built a global people-smuggling conglomerate that stretched from China's Fujian province to Africa, Europe, and South America, relying on one of Chinatown's most violent gangs to protect her power and profits. Sister Ping's empire came to light in 1993, when a ship loaded with 300 near-starving immigrants ran aground off Queens. It took New York's fabled "Jade Squad" and the FBI nearly ten years to untangle the criminal network and home in on its mastermind. Sister Ping--finally convicted in 2005--is currently in prison. Before her capture she amassed an estimated mind-boggling $40 million. THE SNAKEHEAD is a panoramic tale of international intrigue and an inside look at a remarkably successful illegal enterprise and the undocumented immigrants who both fear and depend on it. It is a story about the conflicted issue of immigration in the United States, and a moving exploration of what it means to be--and to become--American.
Contents:
Pilgrims -- Leaving Fujian -- Eighteen-thousand dollar woman -- Dai Lo of the Fuk Ching -- Swiftwater -- Year of the snake -- Mombasa -- The phantom ship -- The teaneck massacre -- Mutiny in the Atlantic -- A well-founded fear -- The fat man -- Freedom birds -- The goldfish and the great wall -- Parole -- Snakeheads international -- Catching Lilly Zhang -- The mother of all Snakeheads.
Subjects:
Noncitizens -- United States.
Human smuggling -- United States.
Human trafficking -- United States.
United States -- Emigration and immigration.
Noncitizens -- United States.
Human smuggling -- United States.
Human trafficking -- United States.
United States -- Emigration and immigration.
ISBN:
9780385521307 (hc)
Availability | |||
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Call Number | Location | Shelf Location | Status |
SOCIAL SCI Crime Kee | Southeast | Nonfiction | In |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [346]-404) and index.