Source: The Federalist
by Elle Purnell
“If Eileen Gu’s mother came to America for a better life, she got it. Yan Gu, the daughter of two Chinese government officials, emigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s, just a few decades after the passage of the Hart-Celler Act, which overhauled immigration policies and prompted a massive increase in arrivals from Asia and Latin America. Educated at Auburn University, Rockefeller University, and eventually Stanford Graduate School of Business, she dabbled as a ski instructor and, apparently, in venture capital. In 2003, she gave birth to a daughter in San Francisco, raising her in an affluent Bay Area neighborhood. What’s known of Eileen Gu’s childhood reads like a caricature of coastal elitism …. Her story would be elevated as a saccharine picture of the neoliberal American dream, if Gu hadn’t decided to ski for China.” (02/20/26)