... In the late nineteenth century, the railroad was imagined by liberal elites as offering a marvelous fix for the country’s ongoing problems of geographical isolation, regional stagnation, and technological backwardness. Paeans to the railway, such as the passage that follows, written...

... of Heroes alongside Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men , two works about Chinese labor on the transcontinental railroad, the chapter explores the interchangeability of Chinese labor, time, and money. Focusing on the range of gender and sexual substitutions represented in these texts, the chapter argues...