Meticulously sourced, fascinating storyThe American dream, the Chinatown underbelly, and the mastermind behind one of the largest human smuggling rings. This book was long in the middle and at times not quite as engaging as the beginning. But I kept coming back to it day after day and it was fully worth it.

Patrick Radden Keefe has quickly become one of my favorite non-fiction writers. I came to this book after reading his latest, “Say Anything” and I am gobsmacked that not only is/are the story/stories in “Snakehead” true but happened where I live— albeit before my time here. I highly recommend this book and his other work— including his New Yorker writings. Radden Keefe painstakingly investigates and researches his books for years and it makes the wait to read his work worth it. He is an incredib...

Patrick Radden Keefe is fast becoming one of my favorite writers stumbing upon Say Something and now this. It is indeed an epic tale of American Dream and the desire to achieve it with whatever way possible. And when the desire for something is so intense crime is bound to rear its ugly head. Its a story of how common people who once came to the US in search of livelihood for their families became heads of global and sophisticated human smuggling syndicate. The book reads like a crime thriller a...

Starts as a true crime story: June 6, 1993 On Rockaway beach New York about 250 Chinese wash ashore. A few strong swimmers have dry clothes in a plastic bag taped to their legs get dressed and walk away. Eventually 10 bodies are counted. Half the reminder are moved to a prison in York, Pennsylvania. The immigrants moved have asylum cases and need legal representation. Page 227:Craig Trebilcock, a young litigator was asked to do a favor and represent some of the Chinese. Craig was previously an a...

This is a well researched in depth book about the Chinese human smuggling network. It starts with the Chinese boat that ran aground in Rockaway, Queens. The Golden Venture. It traces the steps of the Snakeheads and those who pay for their passage out of China. It examines motivations and gives a personal human face on the victims and the Snakeheads. I read this book because I read his latest book, Say Nothing. I believe Snakeheads was approached with more emotion and sympathy than Say Nothing.

All of the elements of a thriller are here (murder, corruption, double-crosses, huge sums of cash, intimidation, among others) but it really doesn’t read that way. Instead it’s more of a sweeping view of the snakehead trade between Fujian Province, China and Chinatown in Manhattan. In particular we learn about a small handful of major players in the late 80s and early 90s.The author writes extremely well and, quite similar to Sebastian Junger, has an informatively digressive style. He never gets...

According to the author, a "snakehead" is someone who charges a huge amount of money to "take people out of China and into other countries." This book focuses on one of these people, Sister Ping, who came to the US legally and then proceeded to cash in on every opportunity she could, including smuggling human beings into the country for millions in profit. It was the wreck of the ship Golden Venture near Rockaway NY in 1993 in which several people died that captured the attention of the Federal

The Snake Head by Patrick Radden KeefeThis history of the Chinese smuggling trade into the United States was penned in 2009. While not as popular as his 2019 blockbuster, Say Nothing, about the violence in Northern Ireland, Snake Head is a fascinating read. This history follows Cheng Chui Ping, a Chinese immigrant to NYC, as she bankrolled and worked with the Fuk Ching gang to smuggle thousands of Fujianese into NYC during the 1980’s and 1990’s. Her nickname is Sister Ping and she is revered in

Snakehead is a term for people who bring foreigners into a country illegally, outside of immigration laws. Mostly through the book the storyline follows a particularly successful snakehead, Sister Ping. The book details Sister Ping and other snakeheads smuggling Chinese citizens to the US, as well as their plentiful helpers from many different countries. For human smuggling, you could say it takes a village. Law enforcement in the US is also examined here, with profiles of a few of the people th...

The Snakehead is not as concise or as enthrallingly brilliant as Patrick Radden Keefe’s recent Say Nothing, but it is still a completely fascinating examination of criminal ingenuity, greed, the conflict between immigration and isolationism, and the quest for the American Dream. In particular, the first half of the book that details how a little old Asian lady in NYC’s Chinatown set up an expansive, complex international criminal enterprise was brilliant. This book is the kind of property that s...

I would have been much more into this had it been a longform article and not an entire book. Well-researched and competently written, but I was pretty bored throughout and skimmed a lot.

I was drawn to this book with an interest in learning anything I can about China, which is my son's country of birth and I'd also just finished Patrick Radden Keefe's Empire of Pain (which is amazing!-highly recommend).This rating for me is probably more accurately a 3.5-somewhere between good-glad I read it and really good-will stick with me for a very long time.The book details one well-known smuggler, Sister Ping, and her network of people who moved people from China to the US. There's corrup...

At a time when illegal immigration again tops the US news, this book is a timely, detailed, and fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the world of human trafficking, specifically the smuggling of illegal immigrants from China into the USA. In exquisite detail the author traces the smuggling route from the south China coast to its rugged southwest, into the jungles of Burma and Thailand, then to Kenya and finally the US east coast and Manhattan Chinatown, from the viewpoints of those fleeing Chin...

There was a lot of great information in this book. It is a great work of journalism, but it just read like a few dozen long magazine articles stapled together with no real cohesion. There isn’t much in it that propels you forward. I found the same true in Patrick Radden Keefe’s book about the Troubles in Ireland.I have been trying hard to research the Chinese community where I live in Spain, but it’s almost impossible to find the thinnest shred of information. There is NEVER anything in the pres...

really good book. it’s primarily abt this famous snakehead (immigrant smuggler), sister ping, who sets up shop in chinatown and proceeds to build one of the world’s largest human smuggling operations in the US from the late 80s to the early 00s. the narrative structure is really engaging and clever cuz he ties all these different topics together through the story of the Golden Venture, a ship carrying a bunch of Chinese migrants that ran aground near long island and caused a huge hubbub in the U...

The Snakehead is a book about the sprawling human smuggling operations between Fujian and America and ugh it was so good. It provided a balance of viewpoints on human smuggling and aliens. Was it overall morally good or bad? The book leaves it up to the reader to decide.I love the way Keefe writes. It’s non-fiction in an engrossing fiction form and he has this talent with words. He chooses his words carefully, and when he used an unusual word, it was because it had the nuance required. Since the...

How is Patrick Radden Keefe so damn good at writing non-fiction? This doesn't reach the heights of Say Nothing (really what can?) but it's a fascinating story in its own right and Keefe tells it well and thoroughly, providing enough detail without larding the narrative. He also takes an eagle's eye view on economic migration, the plight of Fujianese folk in both China and America, and the complexity of human migration. It was both fascinating and horrifying and I appreciate how he gave Sister Pi...