For decades much of what the average American knows about Chinatown was invented by films, television, and comics. The image of Chinese America and Chinatowns was a constant battle between real and fake portrayals. This class will explore the range and variety of those images from late 19th century to the present such as the D.W. Griffith’s silent movie classic “Broken Blossoms” (1919) to recent documentaries about Chinatown to fiction ranging from Sui Sin Far to Fae Myenne Ng to Timothy Mo.