Mae Ngai

Columbia University

Mae M. Ngai is a U.S. legal and political historian interested in questions of immigration, citizenship, and nationalism. She is the author of the "Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America" (2004) and "The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America" (2010). Ngai has written on immigration history and policy for the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation and The Boston Review. Before becoming a historian she was a labor-union organizer and educator in New York City, working for District 65-UAW and the Consortium for Worker Education.