Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister · Pushkin Industries

Grandson of a Paper Son from The Chinatown Sting

October 28, 2025·30 min·2 clips

Judge Chin describes his grandfather arriving illegally in 1916 as a paper son.

1. Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister turns to Judge Denny Chin and Asian American legal history through the Chinatown Sting bonus episode. 2. Lydia Jean Cott interviews Judge Denny Chin, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and co-author of a forthcoming textbook called Asian Americans and the Law. 3. The episode asks what Chinese Exclusion, Chinatown, and Asian American court cases reveal about how American law treated Chinese immigrants and their families. 4. Chin describes his grandfather as a paper son who came to the United States illegally in 1916 by claiming to be the son of a U.S. citizen. 5. He says his grandfather worked as a waiter in Chinese restaurants, returned to China only twice to marry and to see the birth of Chin’s father, and became a U.S. citizen in 1947. 6. Chin points to the naturalization certificate on his wall and says he believes his grandfather was sworn in at the courthouse where they were sitting. 7. He explains that his own family entered in 1956 under the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, which was intended to help people fleeing communism. 8. Chin recalls Chinatown as a center of family life, with railroad apartments, monthly money orders, and daily subway trips to language school for Cantonese lessons. 9. He says his grandfather later retired and spent time in a Chinatown hardware store, talking with other older men. 10. Chin recounts writing a Princeton senior thesis called The Old Ones of Chinatown, which focused on Chinatown senior citizens. 11. He says he entered Fordham Law School unsure about becoming a lawyer, then learned he wanted to return to the courthouse after a summer internship. 12. Chin describes playing pickup basketball at Columbus Park near the courthouses, where Chinatown newspapers later recognized him after the Madoff case and the circuit nomination. 13. He and his wife, Kathy Harada Chin, stage annual reenactments at the National Asian Pacific Bar Association in New York using trial transcripts, judges’ opinions, briefs, and historical newspaper articles. 14. Chin says the reenactments are performed by lawyers who are also willing actors, and that the format gives legal history a theatrical shape. 15. He discusses a reenactment about 22 Chinese women detained in San Francisco in the 1880s unless each posted a $500 bond. 16. Chin says the case reached the Supreme Court, the women won, and the broader issue involved whether states could handle immigration on their own when federal action seemed insufficient. 17. He also describes his own participation in a reenactment of the Ethel Rosenberg case, where he played Mr. Rosenberg and experienced a staged death sentence. 18. Chin says studying these cases helped him see the difficulty of legal process and the importance of creative, innovative lawyering for people with limited means. 19. The episode is conversational and reflective, with courtroom anecdotes, family history, and careful legal explanation from a sitting federal judge. 20. Listeners interested in Chinese American history, immigration law, and courtroom storytelling will get the most from it; listeners wanting a fast-moving true-crime plot may skip it.

As heard by us

A careful legal-history episode that makes old immigration fights feel immediate.

Lydia Jean Cott uses a bonus Chinatown Sting chapter to track how the Chinese Exclusion Act shaped policy and the people caught in its reach. The episode stays close to a San Francisco case involving Chinese women, a $500 bond demand, and a fight that made its way to the Supreme…

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Why you'd press play

You want a Chinatown Sting bonus episode that follows a Chinese Exclusion Act-era case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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