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A review by swally2005
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe
challenging
dark
informative
fast-paced
5.0
I live in a fairly sparsely populated Midwestern state, but because I spent a few years living and studying in China, I always noticed that the Japanese restaurants around here employed Chinese people. I would inevitably get to talking to them, and they were all too happy to speak Mandarin with a foreigner in a middle-of-nowhere flyover state. When I would ask them where they were from, they ALL seemed come from Fujian Province. I knew where that was, but I had been based in Shanghai, so I had not heard about how common it was for people from that area to make their way to the United States. I just found it very odd and assumed that they were smuggled in by the Triads to work in their restaurants. Until reading this book, I had no idea what the Snakehead industry was, or how massive it was in the Fujian province or around the world. This definitely explains the influx of Fujianese people I come across working in the various Asian restaurants around town.
This is not my first Patrick Radden Keefe book, so I've come to expect and appreciate a certain level of detailed investigative reporting, along with his uncanny ability to craft a narrative that draws the attention of his readers, and this book does not disappoint in the slightest. He always finds the most interesting subjects to investigate, and after finishing all of his currently published works, I think that this book is my favorite of them all. The level of access he was able to get in order to do the research for this book astonishes me. I was living in China around the time that he had to have been coming over as part of his research on Sister Ping and the Snakehead trade, and it just speaks to his skill level as an investigative journalist as getting straight answers from CCP officials or anybody involved in the Snakehead industry, would've not only been very difficult, but very dangerous as well. This is one of the most well-researched and well-executed books on the subject for those who are interested to learn more.
This is not my first Patrick Radden Keefe book, so I've come to expect and appreciate a certain level of detailed investigative reporting, along with his uncanny ability to craft a narrative that draws the attention of his readers, and this book does not disappoint in the slightest. He always finds the most interesting subjects to investigate, and after finishing all of his currently published works, I think that this book is my favorite of them all. The level of access he was able to get in order to do the research for this book astonishes me. I was living in China around the time that he had to have been coming over as part of his research on Sister Ping and the Snakehead trade, and it just speaks to his skill level as an investigative journalist as getting straight answers from CCP officials or anybody involved in the Snakehead industry, would've not only been very difficult, but very dangerous as well. This is one of the most well-researched and well-executed books on the subject for those who are interested to learn more.