[6] Lui is the author of The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City, a co-winner of the 2007 Best Book Prize for History from the Association for Asian American Studies.
from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and a certificate in East Asian Studies.
[10] Mary Lui's first book The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City examines the unsolved 1909 murder of Elsie Sigel to explore race, gender, and interracial sexual relations in the formation of New York City Chinatown, 1870–1920.
Using a variety of English and Chinese-language sources such as census data, church records, reportage, and immigration files, Lui argues that coverage of the case magnified public hostility toward inter-racial relationships and further restricted Chinese mobility in New York City's Chinatown.
[11][12][13][14][15][16] Lui is currently at work on a new book entitled Making Model Minorities: Asian Americans, Race, and Citizenship in Cold War America at Home and Abroad, which examines the history of Asian Americans and U.S. cultural diplomacy in Asia during the Cold War.