Today, during the Cundill History Prize Festival held in Montreal, the jury named the 2026 Cundill History Prize winner, which honors “outstanding history writing,” as Beth Lew-Williams’s John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law.
“Commenting on the selection, jury chair Emily Greenwood observed that in John Doe Chinaman, Lew-Williams dissects the paradoxes inherent in anti-Chinese racial statutes in the American West from the 1850s to the 1920s, examining the aims of these laws, their consequences, and how Chinese migrants navigated them.”
These measures were part of a broader racial regime, one that sought to contain and mute the lives of Chinese migrants, reducing them to faceless stereotypes—the “John Doe Chinaman” referenced in the title. Through a deft blend of data-driven analysis of legal and bureaucratic records and piercing storytelling, Lew-Williams reconstructs the erased voices of these lives in the historical record, bringing back Chinese perspectives that illuminate what has long been missing. This work stands out as both highly innovative and forcefully argued.
Lew-Williams will receive $75,000; finalists Jonathan Cheng and Alexander Lee will each receive $10,000.
