Our Voices, Our Histories: Asian American and Pacific Islander Women

Description

An innovative anthology showcasing Asian American and Pacific Islander women’s histories Our Voices, Our Histories brings together thirty-five Asian American and Pacific Islander authors in a single volume to explore the historical experiences, perspectives, and actions of Asian American and Pacific Islander women in the United States and beyond. This volume is unique in exploring Asian American and Pacific Islander women’s lives along local, transnational, and global dimensions. The contributions present new research on diverse aspects of Asian American and Pacific Islander women’s history, from the politics of language, to the role of food, to experiences as adoptees, mixed race, and second generation, while acknowledging shared experiences as women of color in the United States. Our Voices, Our Histories showcases how new approaches in US history, Asian American and Pacific Islander studies, and Women’s and Gender studies inform research on Asian American and Pacific Islander women. Attending to the collective voices of the women themselves, the volume seeks to transform current understandings of Asian American and Pacific Islander women’s histories. ntroduction: Our voices Introduction: Our histories PART I: EARLY ERA, INDIGENOUS AND GLOBAL ROOTS. 1. Mālamalama: reconnecting as native Hawaiian women through cultural history 2. Global roots and gendered routes: early Asian American women's history 3. Two sisters, two stories: transnational lives of Ume Tsuda and Yona Abiko PART II: NEW INTERSECTIONS OF RACE, GENDER, GENERATION, COMMUNITIES. 4. "Up to my elbows in rice!": women building communities and sustaining families in pre-1965 Filipina/o America 5. Stretching the boundaries of Christian respectability, race, and gender during Jim Crow: Chinese American women and the Southern Baptist Church 6. Stepping onstage and breaking ground: Asian American dancers complicate race and gender stereotypes, 1930s-1960s PART III: NEW CULTURAL FORMATIONS, NEW SELVES. 7. "She speaks well": language as performance of Japanese American femininity and social mobility in postwar Hawaiʻi 8. History, identity, and the life course: mixed race Asian American women 9. Ancestral ethics and Sāmoanness: explaining the contemporary Sāmoan American women PART IV: WARTIMES AND AFTERMATH. 10. Memories of mass incarceration: mobilizing Japanese American women for redress and beyond 11. Refugee lifemaking practices: Southeast Asian women 12. "Defiant daughters": the resilience and resistance of 1.5-generation Vietnamese American women PART V: GLOBALIZATION, WORK, FAMILY, COMMUNITY, ACTIVISM. 13. Precarious labor: Asian immigrant women, 1970s-2010s 14. The backbone of New York City's Chinatown: Chinese women and the garment industry, 1950-2009 15. Women's agency and cost in migration: Taiwanese American transnational families 16. "Revolutionary care" as activism: Filipina nurses and care workers in Chicago, 1965-2016 PART VI: SPACES OF POLITICAL STRUGGLES. 17. The mother's tongue: language, women, and the Chamorros of Guam 18. Asian American feminisms and legislative activism: Patsy Takemoto Mink in the US Congress 19. Opening the path to marriage equality: Asian American lesbians reach out to their families and communities 20. Turning points: South Asian feminist responses to gender-based violence and immigration enforcement PART VII: NEW DIASPORAS, DIVERSE LIVES, EVOLVING IDENTITIES. 21. Locating adoptees in Asian America: Jane Jeong Trenka and Deann Borshay Liem 22. "Let them attack me for wearing the hijab": Islam and identity in the lives of Bangladeshi American women 23. Navigating the hyphen: Tongan-American women in academia PART VIII: GENDER, CULTURAL CHANGE, INTERGENERATIONAL DYNAMICS. 24. Linked lives: Korean American daughters and their aging immigrant Parents 25. Negotiating cultural change: professional Hmong American women 26. Stories and Visions across generations: Khmer American women Reflections Acknowledgments About the contributors Index.