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"A stunning and sweeping piece of historical scholarship. It represents a major contribution to research in U.S. women's history."—Vicki L. Ruiz, author of Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950
"Judy Yung's latest and most impressive work demonstrates how an engaged, community-based scholar can reclaim an experience otherwise silenced."—John Kuo Wei Tchen, author of Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown
"Judy Yung possesses a humane and deep feeling for her subjects. A good listener, she allows these women to emerge in her pages as interesting and complex. Sweeping in chronology and comprehensive in scope, her study invites us to reach toward an intricate understanding of the making of our multicultural society."—Ronald Takaki, author of Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans
"Yung's book combines the richness of a community study, including engaging cameo biographies, with a broad survey of Chinese American women's history."—Mari Jo Buhle, author of Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920
"This is passionate and illuminating scholarship that adds a needed dimension to the discourse of women of color in general, and Chinese American women in particular."—Paula Giddings, author of When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America
"Students and teachers of U.S. women's history will be grateful for Yung's compelling overview of the history of Chinese American women and for the ways her focus on San Francisco brings women's community, family, and personal conflicts to life. A memorable and important book."—Kathryn Kish Sklar, author of Florence Kelley and Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900
List of contents
TERMINOLOGY AND TRANSLITERATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Introduction
I
Bound Feet: Chinese Women in the Nineteenth Century
2
Unbound Feet: Chinese Immigrant Women, 1902-1929
3
First Steps: The Second Generation, 1920s
4
Long Strides: The Great Depression, 1930s
5
In Step: The War Years, 1931-1945
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX
NOTES
GlOSSARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
About the author
Judy Yung is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Chinese Women of America: A Pictorial History (1986) and the coauthor of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island (1980, 1991), which won the Before Columbus Foundation Book Award.
Summary
Starting with the crippling custom of footbinding, this work presents a study of Chinese American women during the first half of the twentieth century. Using this symbol of subjugation to examine social change in the lives of these women, it shows the stages of 'unbinding' that occurred between the turn of the century and the end of World War II.
