Description
Book SynopsisIn 1982, 20,000 Chinese American garment workers - mostly women - went on strike in New York's Chinatown and forced Chinese garment industry employers in the city to sign a union contract. This study explains how this militancy and organized protest, seemingly so at odds with traditional Chinese female behavior, came about.
Trade Review"Bao does an excellent job in not only portraying Chinese women workers' work and lives, but also revealing that the Chinese women's labor history in New York's garment industry is also part of American labor history, and they can only fully be understood through the complex interactions of race/ethnicity, class, and gender."--Wei Li,
Journal of Asian Studies"A significant reference for scholars of women's studies, Chinese American history, immigration history, and labor history."--Huping Ling,
American Historical Review"Offers a nuanced picture of transformations in personal and family life. Particularly successful are the portrayals of women's growing financial and emotional centrality in the family and of relations among Chinese women born in different parts of the world."--Adam McKeown,
Journal of American History"Xiaolan Bao's book makes a significant contribution to the literature on Chinese American historical experiences. This excellent case study is a fine example of serious empirical investigation."--Renqiu Yu,
Journal of American Ethnic History"Bao's research offers valuable insights into the intersection of race and class, one of the central questions in her book. . . . Bao's work reminds us that to fully appreciate how the two dimensions of race and class intersected, we also need to take a gendered perspective."--
Left History"Theoretically informed and thoroughly researched, this multilayered study demonstrates the author's grasp of the complex experiences of the Chinese garment workers and their place within the larger historical context."--
Business History Review"Xiaolan Bao has written a moving and important book about Chinese women in New York City's garment industry. Because of her reliance on more than a hundred oral histories, she makes the women speak for themselves as well as inform the reader. Historians of immigration and women will find this a gem."--David M. Reimers, author of
Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America"This monumental study thoroughly examines the peculiar nature and situation of the Chinese female garment workers and their relations within their community and family, with their employers, and with the American unions. Xiaolan Bao's use of interviews, newspapers, and other sources in both Chinese and English makes this work particularly valuable."--Sue Fawn Chung, author of
Power and Influence: The Hongmen Zhigongtang, a Chinese Secret Society in the American West
