Professor Margaret Woo’s Memoir Chronicles Chinese American Immigration Experience

Professor Margaret Woo’s poignant memoir, The City of Jade Trees, recounting her Chinese family’s challenges, ordeals and accomplishments in the United States, from her great grandfather’s immigration journey to her own distinguished career as a law professor has been accepted for publication by The New Press.

Professor Margaret Woo’s Memoir Chronicles Chinese American Immigration Experience
Professor Margaret Woo

10.01.2025 —Professor Margaret Woo’s poignant memoir, The City of Jade Trees, recounting her Chinese family’s challenges, ordeals and accomplishments in the United States, from her great grandfather’s immigration journey to her own distinguished career as a law professor, has been accepted for publication by The New Press. Woo’s story across four generations depicts the migration and struggle of her family, intersecting with key moments in US immigration history and US-China relations, including the Chinese exclusion acts, national origins quotas, to the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. The book is slated for release in fall 2026.

“Today’s immigration debate is amnesiac. Immigration exclusion is not new nor is the fear of immigration. I hope my family’s story will lend a human face and a reminder of the recurring harsh impacts of America’s immigration policies,” said Woo, a leading expert on comparative civil procedure and the Chinese legal system.

“How each generation resolved the search for home is ultimately how one can find power and identity in those in-between spaces that exist with the crossing of borders,” she added.

Woo is a former fellow of the Bunting Institute (Radcliffe College) and is presently an associate of the East Asian Legal Studies Program at Harvard University. She has received many prestigious grants from a variety of organizations, including the National Science Foundation and the Ford Foundation, and is on the Senior Scholar Roster for the Fulbright Scholars Program. She co-edited East Asian Law: Universal Norms and Local Culture (Routledge, 2003), and Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and co-authored Litigating in America: Civil Procedure in Context (Aspen Publishing, 2006) and Global Issues in Civil Procedure (West Academic, 2021). She is a past co-editor of the American Association of Law School’s Journal of Legal Education.

The New Press is a highly respected nonprofit publisher known for its intellectually rigorous books, its progressive mission and its history of publishing prize-winning nonfiction. The New Press has previously published books by Studs Terkel, Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Patricia Williams and many other leaders and luminaries.

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