Shopping at Giant Foods: Chinese American Supermarkets in Northern California (Scott and Laurie Oki Series in Asian American Studies)

From the 1930s through the 1970s, Chinese American owned supermarkets located outside of Chinatown, catering to a non-Chinese clientele, and featuring mainstream American foods and other products and services rose to prominence and phenomenal success in Northern California, only to decline as union regulations and competition from national chains made their operation unprofitable. Drawing on oral interviews, Alfred YeeÕs study of this trajectory is an insiderÕs view of a fascinating era in Asian American immigration and entrepreneurship.

Alfred Yee is a lecturer at California State University, Sacramento. Previously, he worked in the grocery business for over twenty years as both an employer and employee.

"The unlikely venue of the modern supermarket enables readers to catch glimpses of how Chinese Americans carved out an economic niche for themselves amidst overt and covert discrimination." -The Journal of American History

"Yee's accessible study provides rare insights into the business practices and relationships of Chinese-American enterprises, and their historical legacy. As someone who spent fifteen years in the industry, his passion about the subject, first-hand knowledge, and personal contacts made him uniquely qualified to write this study." -Left History

"Yee's ability to bring to the fore differing and often competing perspectives about the supermarket industry makes this work rich and engaging." -Ameriasia Journal