In Building the Transcontinental, Iris Chang tries to tell the story of chinese immigrants who were escaping from the socio political situation in their country and looking for a new life in a new place.
Her purpose was to show how this immigrant community, that many Americans still consider foreign despite the Chinese presence in the United States for more than a century and a half, were a crucial part on one of the most important American developments in the history and still were not recognized for the only reason of being foreigns.
Chinese laborers had no credit after the Transcontinental Railroad was built, just white americans in the photos, and she wanted to show how unfair this was for this new group arriving in America when they “brought distinctive cultural traits to America—such as reverence for education, hard work, thriftiness, entrepreneurship, and family loyalty—which helped many achieve rapid success in their adopted country.”