Ling graduated from Shanxi University, Taiyuan, Shanxi, PRC , with her bachelor's degree in history in 1982. She earned her master's in 1987 at the University of Oregon, and completed her Ph.D. at Miami University (1991).

She has been teaching at Truman State University since 1991. She is a visiting professor for Jinan University (Guangzhou, China) and for Central Normal University (Wuhan, China). She serves as a consultant to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of Guangdong Provincial Government.

She currently serves as the Executive Editor of the Journal of Asian American Studies. Her research focuses on Asian American studies including immigration and ethnicity, assimilation and adaptation, family and marriage, feminism, employment patterns, and community structures.

She received awards and honors the Ford Foundation Book Award.

Books and Reviews

A Ford Foundation Prize-winning author, she has published more than ten books and over hundred articles on Asian American studies, including immigration and ethnicity, assimilation and adaptation, transnationalism, family and marriage, employment patterns, and community structures. She has been featured in The World Journal (Jan. 15, 2006), the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Feb. 2, 2005), West End Word (Feb. 4, 2005), St. Louis Chinese American News, St. Louis Chinese Journal ,the Overseas Chinese World, River Front Times, among others, and appeared at ???Charles Brennan Show??? KMOX 1120, ???Voice of St. Louis??? (Feb. 4, 2005), KWMU 90.7 (NPR in St. Louis) ???St. Louis on the Air??? (July 5, 2005), among others. She has also been included in many books/encyclopedias on famous Chinese Americans and authors. She is frequently invited to lecture on Asian cultures and Asian American experiences at conferences, universities, schools, libraries, government and private agencies, and community organizations, nationally and internationally.

Ling has published ten books and over a hundred scholarly articles, including:

• Surviving on the Gold Mountain: A History of Chinese American Women and Their Lives (The State University of New York, 1998). ISBN 0791438643 and Chinese St. Louis: From Enclave to Cultural Community (Temple University Press, 2004). ISBN 1592130399 and

• Voices of the Heart: Asian American Women on Immigration, Work, and Family (Truman State University Press, 2007). ISBN 9781931112680. For reviews in Chinese , click here and here.

• Chinese in St. Louis: 1857-2007 . Arcadia Publishing, 2007. Pp. 128. ISBN 978-0-7385-5145-6.

• ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????1999?????? ??????????????????????????????????????? Jinshan Yao: A History of Chinese American Women. Beijing: Chinese Social Sciences Publishing House, 1999. ISBN 7-5004-2504-X. Chinese review

• ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????2003??? Ping Piao Mei Guo: New Immigrants in America. Shanxi, China: Beiyue Literature and Art Publishing House, 2003. ISBN 7-5378-2504-1.