In his introduction, Richard Chu states that his study is driven by a personal quest to understand his own situation: being caught “in-between” the “Chinese” ethnicity he inherited from his parents and the “Filipino” nationality he derived from his upbringing. Building upon the earlier scholarship of “his friend and mentor,” Edgar Wickberg (to whom, in part, the book is dedicated), Chu has written an ambitious study of the Chinese and first-generation Chinese mestizos of Manila from the middle of the nineteenth century to the start of the Pacific War. In addition to drawing carefully from the works of previous scholars, he has added valuable research materials from Philippine and American archival collections and made effective use of a wide range of published primary sources. In addition, his study applies a number of recent theoretical approaches to Chinese diasporas and on American colonial rule in the Philippines. The book is meticulously annotated and rich in descriptive detail, including a useful glossary of Chinese (Hokkien and Mandarin) terms.

Chu concentrates on the social, cultural, and political life of the families Chinese merchants formed in the Philippines, in China, and, significantly, in between the two. In a concise first chapter, he provides a very useful description of the Minnan region of Fujian province in southern China, the place of origin for nearly all the Chinese who came to the Philippines. The book is divided into two periods: the late Spanish era (from the 1860s to 1898) and over three decades of American rule (1899 to the 1930s). Within these colonial frameworks, Chu is concerned with how Chinese and first-generation Chinese mestizo families constructed “sliding identities” within the changing political, bureaucratic, and economic formations imposed upon them. He concludes these families employed “flexible” or “border crossing” strategies” (pp. 106, 176, 408) to respond to and negotiate the changing conditions they encountered: Spanish emphasis on religion (favoring Chinos Cristianos) and taxation of wealthy Chinese merchants; the Filipino separatist movement's emphasis on the construction of an indigenous national identity; American emphasis on racial and national exclusion of Chinese; and, lastly, the Republic of China's efforts to incorporate overseas Chinese into its nation-building project. The central argument emphasizes that from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s, Chinese and first-generation Chinese mestizos of Manila moved from being constructed as a “cultural minority” (under Spain) to a “national minority” (under the U.S.). Thus, by the 1930s many Chinese had come to view themselves and were being viewed by Filipinos as racial and national “others,” limiting their ability to negotiate “in-between.” Chu emphasizes that this development continued in the post-1945 period, when a more rigid distinction, rooted in “nation-based” or “territorially-bound” identities, developed between “Chinese” and “Filipinos.” One of the most salient manifestations of this new construction is that the “pretty common” Chinese-Filipino intermarriages of the Spanish era “are presently rare or discouraged” (pp. 407–408).

By examining biographies of several prominent Chinese and first-generation Chinese mestizos and making effective use of the large collection of Manila's nineteenth-century notarial records (protocolos), Chu explores patterns and strategies of religious conversion and practice (including naming and burial rites), marriage (including “consensual unions” and “polygyny/polygamy”), inheritance, gender relations, education, citizenship, and residential and household life (including food, attire, health care, and leisure time choices). Among the major contributions of the study is his close examination of the roles of “Chinese mestiza” wives and mothers, who frequently operated successfully within two worlds: as members of “Chinese” families (even as “concubines”) in both the Philippines and China and as “Filipinas” providing critical cultural and social (even economic) networks in the Philippines.

To be critical, one can argue that Chu does not adequately acknowledge the differences between the older Chinese mestizo communities (dating from the early eighteenth century to 1850) and the post-1850 merchants and their 1.5 generation mestizo families. By the 1850s, large numbers of “Chinese mestizos” were already fully assimilated into “Filipino” society, a society that was in part defined at its higher levels by their involvement. Chu is clearly aware of these differences, but provides almost no comparison of the two groups. Moreover, Chu's concentration on the prominent and wealthy Chinese Christians tells us little about the much larger number of non-Christian Chinese (infieles) who made up about 85% of the Chinese before 1850 and some 96% of the those residing in the Chinese district of Binondo in 1886 (pp. 148–149). As such, the study emphasizes families in which the parents were married, rather than those where the non-Chinese “wife” was involved in a “consensual union.” More information on these non-Christian families might alter Chu's conclusions. Similarly, his claim that the Manila Chinese made “frequent return” trips to China (pp. 87, 267, 345) could also be better documented. Arguably, Chu's discussion of the involvement of first-generation Chinese mestizos in the “fight for political reform” and in the “formation of an independent Philippine nation-state” at the turn of the twentieth century is somewhat misleading (pp. 82–87; 251, 279, 266–267, 398). For example, although Mariano Limjap gave support to the reform movement (as a “flexible strategy”?), he was not involved in the revolutionary struggle led by the Katipunan and later joined the Partido Federal, a mostly conservative party of wealthy and highly educated Filipinos advocating U.S. statehood for the Philippines. Lastly, the useful map of Manila (p. 60) omits some important sites mentioned in the text, among them San Nicolas, other major plazas in the vicinity of Binondo, and the Parian adjacent to Intramuros.