"The Power of Chinatown brilliantly theorizes and documents Los Angeles Chinatown's struggles and dilemmas in claiming rights to a just and equitable city. Laureen Hom richly documents contemporary community history to show why historic urban Chinatowns persist even under pressures of gentrification. Pulling together threads from global migration to intimate community relationships, the book weaves an illuminating narrative about the unique geography of Los Angeles and how Chinese and Asian Americans must reckon with growing urban inequities. A must-read for understanding gentrification, urban development, and racial politics."--Karen Umemoto, Helen and Morgan Chu Chair and Director, Asian American Studies Center, UCLA "Hom provides a view of power dynamics in Los Angeles's Chinatown that is centered in the present day but historically informed. The book's attention to diverse Chinese (and more broadly Asian) American community groups is an important contribution in a political moment in which essentialist identity politics often obscure the heterogeneity of racial and ethnic groups. Hom offers a sophisticated analysis of the meanings and dynamics of gentrification in an ethnic enclave that should be of interest to scholars and students of race and urban space in general."--Wendy Cheng, author of The Changs Next Door to the Díazes: Remapping Race in Suburban California