Photo: Tommy Kha
Ava Chin is a fifth-generation Chinese American writer, journalist, and professor whose award-winning nonfiction work explores themes of family, exclusion, and identity. Her latest book, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming (Penguin Press, 2023), offers a deeply personal account of the lasting effects of the Chinese Exclusion Act on multiple generations of her family. Hailed as “stunning” by Publisher’s Weekly and “sensitive, ambitious, well-reported” by The New York Times, Mott Street was named a Best Book of 2023 by TIME, San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Elle. It also won the Best Nonfiction Book Award from the Chinese American Librarians Association and received high praise from major outlets including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.
In addition to Mott Street, Chin is the author of Eating Wildly (Simon & Schuster, 2014), which won first prize at the MFK Fisher Book Awards and was named one of Library Journal’s Best Books of 2014. A former New York Timescolumnist, she has written for The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Marie Claire, and Saveur, among others. She has held prestigious fellowships at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the U.S. Fulbright Program, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Chin is a Professor of Creative Nonfiction and Journalism at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she leads the American Studies Certificate Program, and teaches nonfiction writing at the College of Staten Island. Named one of Huffington Post’s “9 Contemporary Authors You Should Be Reading,” she has also appeared on C-SPAN, PBS, and NPR. Chin lives in Manhattan with her husband and daughter.
MOTT STREET
Available in paperback April 23, 2025
As the only child of a single mother in Queens, Ava Chin found her family’s origins to be shrouded in mystery. She had never met her father, and her grandparents’ stories didn’t match the history she read at school. Mott Streettraces Chin’s quest to understand her Chinese American family’s story. Over decades of painstaking research, she finds not only her father but also the building that provided a refuge for them all (Source: Penguin Random House).
“A deeply empathetic and important book, one that renders visible the hidden achievements and sufferings of her family members—and insists that the wounding history of exclusion be seen clearly as well.” —Julia Flynn Siler, Wall Street Journal
TIME 100 Must-Read Books of 2023 * San Francisco Chronicle’s Favorite Nonfiction * Kirkus Best Nonfiction of 2023 * Winner of the Chinese American Librarians Association Best Non-Fiction Book Prize * Library Journal Best Memoir and Biography of 2023 * One of Elle’s Best Memoirs of 2023 (So Far) * An ALA Notable Book *
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