The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream

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A Book of the Year: Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, and Washington Post Here’s the dream. You live in some struggletown or slumbervillage in a dreary country. You make cents digging or dredging or farming peanuts. The government is corrupt; it takes your money. Your children are more hungry than they should be, more hungry than any children ought to be. Then the dream says: Come to America. Breathe in America. Earn dollars and send your children to college. Be free.

The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld…

Snakeheads can become invasive species and cause ecological damage because, in many areas to which they are not native, the absence of natural enemies makes them an apex predator. Not only can they breathe air, but they can also survive on land for up to 4 days, provided they are wet, and are known to migrate up to 400 m (1/4mi) on wet land to other bodies of water by wriggling with their bodies and fins.These fish reach sexual maturity between one and three years, depending on growing conditions, and breed from April to August. They can spawn up to five times, each time laying more than a thousand orange-yellow eggs, which are buoyant. Sometimes they can lay many more, however, approaching 50,000 eggs per year. Snakeheads often make floating nests made of bits of vegetation to protect their eggs. Brilliant. . . . Keefe’s account maintains the swift pace of a thriller. With the immigration debate still boiling, this exploration of how far people will go to achieve the American dream is a must-read.”

The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and

hundred miles off shore, out in the open ocean, and then they would send out small fishing boats which would offload the ships. This was called offloading and it was actually a kind of, in its own sort of diversified way, a b Böhme, M. (2004). "Migration history of air-breathing fishes reveals Neogene atmospheric circulation patterns". Geology. 32 (5): 393. Bibcode: 2004Geo....32..393B. doi: 10.1130/G20316.1. In a formidably well-researched book that is as much a paean to its author's industriousness as it is a chronicle of crime, Mr. Keefe outlines the way in which the Fujianese were forced out of China, driven to take desperately roundabout and dangerous travel routes and eventually arrived in America courtesy of the lucrative human smuggling business. Snakehead is the term for an entrepreneurial leader of that trade. When it comes time to breed, both parents work together to construct a nest out of underwater plants. The female lays her eggs on top of the nest, and the male fertilizes them. Both parents guard the nest viciously, and continue to protect the newly hatched fish until they reach their juvenile stage.Snakehead" (Chinese: 蛇頭; pinyin: shé tóu) is the Chinese term for gangs involved in smuggling people.