Mah-jongg was a relatively modern game that was developed in the mid-to-late 1800s, around the Yangtze River Delta.

This tells us a lot about the making of modern American culture. In doing my initial research, I found hundreds of newspaper articles talking about this massive national fad in the 1920s, in language that touches on gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality and I immediately knew this was a much bigger story. What I found is that a lot of people have asked the question, and there was a lot of misinformation, a lot of theories, but no one had done the scholarly work to find out. But it was really my aunt, who had grown up in a strongly Jewish part of Denver in the 1950s and ‘60s, who asked the question, “Why do all my Jewish friends play mah-jongg?” that started my interest in exploring the history of the game, and particularly the history of the game in the United States. It was just really a part of the fabric of public life as well as private life. And when I was there, I saw mah-jongg everywhere. I lived for a year in southwestern China, before beginning my Ph.D.

What initially piqued your interest in mah-jongg as a game, and then as the focus of your work as an academic?