Asian American Women: The Frontiers Reader

336 Pages·2003·14.461 MB·English

by  Linda Trinh Vo (editor), Marian Sciachitano (editor)

Asian American Women
Edited by
Linda Trinh Vo and
Marian Sciachitano with
. Susan H.Armitage,
Patricia Hart, and
Karen Weathermon

Ạsian American Women
The Frontiers Reader
EDITED BY
LINDA TRINH VÕ AND
MARIAN SCIACHITANO
WITH SUSAN H. ARMITAGE
PATRICIA HART, AND
KAREN WEATHERMON
University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London
© 2004 by the Frontiers
Publishing, Inc. All rights
reserved. Manufactured in
the United States of America
©
Library of Congress Catalog-
ing-in-Publication Data
Asian American women : the
Frontiers reader / edited by
Linda Trinh Vo and Marian
Sciachitano with Susan H.
Armitage, Patricia Hart, and
Karen Weathermon. p. cm.
Essays originally published in
Frontiers : a journal of
women’s studies. Includes
bibliographical references
and index.
ISBN 0-8032-9627-4
(pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Asian American women -
History. 2. Asian American
women - Social conditions.
3. Asian Americans — Ethnic
identity. 4. Women
immigrants - United States -
Social conditions.
5. Transnationalism.
6. United States - Relations -
Asia. 7. Asia - Relations -
United States.
I. Vo, Linda Trinh, 1964-
II. Sciachitano, Marian, 1962-
III. Frontiers (Boulder,
Colo.) E184.A75A8425 2004
305.48'895073-dc22
2003056513
We dedicate this collection to our students,
who over the years have inspired, challenged,
and educated US with their creativity, energy,
and courage - you remind all of US that there
are no boundaries.
V
\

Contents
ix Introduction: Reimagining Asian American Women’s Experiences
Linda Trinh Võ and Marian Sciachitano
1 “A Bowlful of Tears”: Chinese Women Immigrants on Angel Island
Judy Yung
8 “It is hard to be born a woman but hopeless to be born a Chinese”:
The Life and Times of Flora Belle Jan
Judy Yung
35 Japanese American Women during World War II
Valerie Matsumoto
55 i Desperately Seeking “Deirdre”: Gender Roles, Multicultural Relations,
and Nisei Women Writers of the 1930s
Valerie Matsumoto
68 Japanese American Women and the Student Relocation Movement,
1942-1945
Leslie A. Ito
<y93 Like a Bamboo: Representations of a Japanese War Bride
Debbie Storrs
i25^ A(Vhat Is Winning Anyway? Redefining Veteran: A Vietnamese
American Woman’s Experiences in War and Peace
Suzan Ruth Travis-Robyns
150 Cultural Autobiography, Testimonial, and Asian American
Transnational Feminist Coalition in the “Comfort Women of
World War II” Conference
Pamela Thoma
178 The Cost of Caring: The Social Reproductive Labor of Filipina Live-in
Home Health Caregivers
Charlene Tung
Vlll CONTENTS
port Asian American Women’s Studies Courses: A Look Back at Our
Beginnings
Judy Chu
u.s.
214 De/Colonizing the Exotic: Teaching “Asian Women” in a
Classroom
Piya Chatterjee
240 Negotiating Textual Terrain: A Conversation on Critica^and
Pedagogical Interventions in the Teaching of Ethnic Autobiography
Shelli B. Fowler, Tiffany Ana Lopez, Kate Shanley, Caroline
Chung Simpson, and Traise Yamamoto
288 Reconstructing Identity: The Autobiographical Self of a Japanese
American Woman in Lydia Minatoya’s Talking to High Monks
in the Snow
Aki Uchida
312 Remembering “the Nation” through Pageantry: Femininity and the
Politics of Vietnamese Womanhood in the Hoa Hau Ao Dai Contest
Nhi T. Lieu
337 Fence Sitters, Switch Hitters, and Bi-Bi Girls: An Exploration of Hapa
and Bisexual Identities
Beverly Yuen Thompson
347 List of Contributors
353 Index
Introduction
Reimagining Asian American Womens Experiences
Asian American Women: The “Frontiers” Reader brings together a sampling
of landmark scholarship about Asian American women that originally ap­
peared in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. The collection originated
from our role as guest coeditors of a special issue on Asian American women
for this journal.1 We chose six essays from that issue and selected nine more
essays previously published in the journal to complement the collection.
Our selections were made based on the important impact the essays made
across disciplinary fields of study and their relevancy today. For over twenty-
five years, Frontiers has continually sought to publish pieces on Asian Ameri­
can women by established and emerging scholars, and as a result has played
an instrumental role in contributing to the literature in Asian American
studies, women’s studies, American studies, and ethnic studies.
Since its inception in 1975, Frontiers has served, as its mission statement
explains, as a critical site for interdisciplinary, feminist, and multicultural
scholarship that crosses and reexamines boundaries, and explores the diver­
sity of women’s lives as shaped by race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation,
and region. As early as 1977 and long before it was academically in vogue to
talk about transnational feminism, let alone address the dynamics of global­
ization and its impact on women, Frontiers published such pieces as Matsui
Yayori’s “Sexual Slavery in Korea” and Diana E. H. Russell’s “Report on the
International Tribunal on Crimes against Women.”2 In the spirit of the in­
tent of the journal, the chapters in this collection reveal the lived experiences
and struggles of Asian American women within a geopolitical, economic,
cultural, and historical context. Crucial to this endeavor is broadening our
critical understanding of Asian American women’s resistance to the forces
X INTRODUCTION
of racism, patriarchy, militarism, cultural imperialism, neocolonialism, and
narrow forms of nationalism. Our cover photograph, titled Make Me (1989)
by Yong Soon Min, a Korean American artist who emigrated to the United
States in i960, features four provocative photographic self images that are
somewhat reminiscent of today’s passport photos; that is, with the exception
of the words “assimilated alien,” “exotic emigrant,” “model minority,” and
“objectified other” superimposed on the artist’s face.3 Min’s four-part photo
ensemble critically captures, in nuanced form, the cultural and political
significance of disconnections, invisibilities, memories, marginalizations,
migrations, objectifications, oppositions, and silences that resonate with
the themes interwoven in this collection.
Elaine Kim and Lisa Lowe so clearly state, “As the formation of Asian
Americans within the United States is placed in dialectical relation to inter­
national histories and locations, the objects and methods of neither Asian
American studies nor Asian studies can remain the same.”4 This colliding
or connecting of Asian area studies and American ethnic studies is reconfig­
uring these fields; however, these engagements are still uneven and incon­
sistent, given that the political and philosophical trajectories of the fields
differ significantly. We are connected to Asia for personal, economic, politi­
cal, and sociohistorical reasons.5 For example, our families or relatives may
still live in Asia; transnational corporate capitalism participates in the on­
going racialization and feminization of Asian and Asian American women
and girls, treating them as interchangeable, low-wage laborers throughout
the Pacific; and others remind US we “belong” over “there” without regard
to how many generations we have been “here.” In fact, the race, gender,
class, and sexual boundaries, or “frontiers” of our lives, have always been
transnational, originally forced on US when Asian American families were
u.s.
divided by racist, sexist, and orientalist immigration policies and when
u.s.
first-generation immigrants were categorized as “aliens ineligible for
citizenship.”6
This anthology reflects the changing immigration patterns and ethnic
demographics of the Asian American population over the decades, as well
as transformative regional concentrations. In our early history, Asian Amer­
ican female immigrants were rare, and those who were admitted were clas­
sified as prostitutes, merchant’s wives, or picture brides, and perceived as
secondary to the men who immigrated. Since the passing of the 1965 Im­
migration Act there has been a feminization of Asian immigration; Asian
women are now entering this country on their own or as the primary immi­
grant sponsor of their relatives.7 As this collection reveals, Asian immigrant