The authors of this slender volume of poetry are Flora Belle Jan and Ludmelia Holstein, brought together by historical circumstances and by their passion for poetry. Jan, a Chinese American flapper and journalist, was born in Fresno, California. Holstein, born in Russia of German speaking parents, grew up in Fresno from the age of eight. These collected poems express the exuberance and intensity of their youth. Jans life was short. Their friendship lived on in their poetry.
The authors of this slender volume of poetry are Flora Belle Jan and Ludmelia Holstein, brought together by historical circumstances and by their passion for poetry. Jan, a Chinese American flapper and journalist, was born in Fresno, California. Holstein, born in Russia of German speaking parents, grew up in Fresno from the age of eight. These collected poems express the exuberance and intensity of their youth. Jan's life was short. Their friendship lived on in their poetry.
The authors of this slender volume of poetry are Flora Belle Jan and Ludmelia Holstein, brought together by historical circumstances and by their passion for poetry. Jan, a Chinese American flapper and journalist, was born in Fresno, California. Holstein, born in Russia of German speaking parents, grew up in Fresno from the age of eight. These collected poems express the exuberance and intensity of their youth. Jan's life was short. Their friendship lived on in their poetry.
Unbound Voices brings together the voices of Chinese American women in a fascinating, intimate collection of documents—letters, essays, poems, autobiographies, speeches, testimonials, and oral histories—detailing half a century of their lives in America. Together, these sources provide a captivating mosaic of Chinese women's experiences in their own words, as they tell of making a home for themselves and their families in San Francisco from the Gold Rush years through World War II. The personal nature of these documents makes for compelling reading. We hear the voices of prostitutes and domestic slavegirls, immigrant wives of merchants, Christians and pagans, homemakers, and social activists alike. We read the stories of daughters who confronted cultural conflicts and racial discrimination; the myriad ways women coped with the Great Depression; and personal contributions to the causes of women's emancipation, Chinese nationalism, workers' rights, and World War II. The symphony of voices presented here lends immediacy and authenticity to our understanding of the Chinese American women's lives. This rich collection of women's stories also serves to demonstrate collective change over time as well as to highlight individual struggles for survival and advancement in both private and public spheres. An educational tool on researching and reclaiming women's history, Unbound Voices offers us a valuable lesson on how one group of women overcame the legacy of bound feet and bound lives in America. The selections are accompanied by photographs, with extensive introductions and annotation by Judy Yung, a noted authority on primary resources relating to the history of Chinese American women.
This volume collects the letters written over a thirty-year period by a second generation Chinese American woman, Flora Belle Jan (1906–50). Born in California to immigrant parents and educated at Berkeley and the University of Chicago, Jan raised three children with her husband Charles Wang and worked as a journalist in both the United States and China. Written during the years 1918–48, these letters offer unique insight into the social and political situation of educated, middle-class, professional Chinese American women in the early twentieth century. Literate, candid, and charming, they convey the intellectual curiosity and perspicacity of a vivacious and ambitious woman while tracing her engagement with two different worlds.
The crippling custom of footbinding is the thematic touchstone for Judy Yung's engrossing 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, she shows the stages of "unbinding" that occurred in the decades between the turn of the century and the end of World War II. The setting for this captivating history is San Francisco, which had the largest Chinese population in the United States. Yung, a second-generation Chinese American born and raised in San Francisco, uses an impressive range of sources to tell her story. Oral history interviews, previously unknown autobiographies, both English- and Chinese-language newspapers, government census records, and exceptional photographs from public archives and private collections combine to make this a richly human document as well as an illuminating treatise on race, gender, and class dynamics. While presenting larger social trends Yung highlights the many individual experiences of Chinese American women, and her skill as an oral history interviewer gives this work an immediacy that is poignant and effective. Her analysis of intraethnic class rifts—a major gap in ethnic history—sheds important light on the difficulties that Chinese American women faced in their own communities. Yung provides a more accurate view of their lives than has existed before, revealing the many ways that these women—rather than being passive victims of oppression—were active agents in the making of their own history.
Asian American Women brings together landmark scholarship about Asian American women that has appeared in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies over the last twenty-five years. The essays, written by established and emerging scholars, made a significant impact in the fields of Asian American studies, ethnic studies, women?s studies, American studies, history, and pedagogy. The scholarship is still relevant today?broadening our critical understanding of Asian American women?s resistance to the forces of racism, patriarchy, militarism, cultural imperialism, neocolonialism, and narrow forms of nationalism. The essays in this collection reveal the experiences and struggles of Asian American women within a global political, economic, cultural, and historical context. The essays focus on diverse issues, including unconventional Asian American women of the early 1900s; the life of a Japanese war bride; possibilities for transnational Asian American feminism; the politics of Vietnamese American beauty pageants; mixed race identities and bisexual identities; Filipina healthcare providers; South Asian American representations; and a multiracial exchange on pedagogical interventions. The collection represents the rich diversity of Asian American women?s lives in hope of creating a new transnational space of critical dialogue, strategic resistance, and alliance building.
This work provides scholars, instructors, and students with influential essays that have defined the field of American girls' history and culture. Covering girlhood and the relationships between girls and women, the volume tackles pivotal themes such as education, work, play, sexuality, consumption, and the body.
By merging scholarly writing with personal life stories, Women Writing Women creates a new setting for communicating the unique experiences of women. The interdisciplinary nature of this volume, incorporating authors' ideas on identity, gender, and social realities, illuminates a rich diversity of experiences. To give voice to the different realities women live in and write from, the editors have divided the anthology into four sections: writing about the self; writing about the family and other intimate relationships; writing about the women they study; and writing about women from sources such as diaries and letters. Within this framework women touch on subjects such as ethnicity, sexuality, motherhood, and feminist versus traditional values. The result is a collection of essays that pays tribute to women?s complex realities and to their critical creativity in writing about those realities.
This anthology of readings portrays the lives of ordinary Americans and examines the diversity of the American people, from the earliest settlement of America to Reconstruction.
