First Advisor

Marc Rodriguez

Date of Award

Spring 6-15-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in History and University Honors

Department

History

Language

English

Subjects

diaspora, migration, oral history, art, Chinese, Chinatown

DOI

10.15760/honors.1705

Abstract

This thesis examines the history, transformation, and contemporary significance of Portland's Chinatown through an oral history framework, emphasizing the voices of Chinese American artists. Beginning with a comprehensive historical overview from the mid-nineteenth-century Gold Rush migrations and railroad labor to twentieth-century exclusion, dispossession under urban renewal, and the late-twentieth-century dispersal into suburbs, the thesis traces how structural racism and policy shaped both the physical landscape and communal life of Oregon's Chinese diaspora. Through in-depth interviews with local artists, this research aims to illuminate how individual experiences of identity, belonging, and creative expression navigate the tensions between heritage and adaptation.

Drawing on three semi-structured interviews, the study explores generational shifts in language, cultural practice, and spatial attachment. It reveals that second-generation Chinese Americans often feel peripheral to the historic enclave yet sustain cultural memory through family traditions, community associations, and artistic practice. The thesis thus highlights how art serves as both a conduit for personal narratives and a medium for resisting erasure. Artists articulate this liminal experience of diaspora: grounded in ancestral legacy yet compelled to excel in new social contexts.

Comparative analysis also situates Portland's experience alongside larger Chinatowns, showing its early prominence and subsequent decline into a predominantly symbolic district. The study further examines how contemporary institutions like the Portland Chinatown Museum, Lan Su Chinese Garden, and emergent ethnoburbs seek to preserve heritage and foster cross-cultural dialogue amid ongoing challenges of gentrification and suburbanization.

Ultimately, this thesis argues that the vitality of Chinese American life in Oregon resides less in static geographic boundaries than in dynamic, transgenerational practices of storytelling, artistry, and community building. By centering oral testimonies, it not only recovers overlooked histories but also charts possibilities for sustainable cultural resilience in the region's evolving urban landscape.

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Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/43811

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