Traditionally, U.S. history books have discounted the history of Asians in the United States and have focused instead on the path that European settlers followed, first to the New England colonies and then across the continent to the Pacific. In fact, there is evidence that Chinese admiral Zheng He reached North America seventy-two years before Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492. It is well documented that Filipinos working on Spanish galleons traveled to North America in 1587, fifty years before the British settled Jamestown. Since the Philippines were colonized by Spain, there were Filipinos in all of the Spanish communities, including Mexico, the southern United States, and the area that became California. A Filipino colony, the first Asian community in North America, was established in the Louisiana bayous in 1781. Soon, more Chinese men moved to the continent. Prohibited from gaining citizenship, many associated with the criminal element...