Asian American Women and Men - 2nd Edition by Yen Le Espiritu (Paperback)

About the Book

Labor, laws, and love. Espiritu explores how racist and gendered labor conditions and immigration laws have affected relations between and among Asian American women and men.

Book Synopsis

Labor, laws, and love. Espiritu explores how racist and gendered labor conditions and immigration laws have affected relations between and among Asian American women and men.

Review Quotes

Espiritu examines the historical and contemporary experiences of Asian American women and men-with each other and with the dominant white society-from a gendered perspective. Locating gender in its intersection with race and class, this is one of the few works in ethnic studies or women's/gender studies that actually discusses the matrix of race/gender/class structures of oppression within a specific racial-ethnic community, i.e., Asian Americans, one that is also largely an immigrant community. Espiritu lends support to charges by women of color that traditional feminist theory falsely universalizes the category of 'women, ' and overlooks the positions that white men and white women occupy over men of color. She also admits that this work does not disrupt the 'male-centered' framework of Asian American studies. The historical oppression of Asian Americans is explored along material and cultural lines, e.g., the formal and informal labor markets, including prostitution; family and small businesses; Japanese American internment; marriage and family; refugee resettlement; racist stereotyping. Theoretically, Espiritu advances the concept of 'racialized patriarchy.' She concludes with a call to create an 'imagined community' of cross-gender, cross-cultural, and cross-class coalitions bound together by the common struggle against all pervasive forms of structured domination.

Asian American Women and Men by Yen Le Espiritu offers a piercing and sensitive account of the experiences of first- and second-generation Asian American women and men, showing that gender differentiation and disadvantage is not a universal experience but is structured distinctly depending on its intersections with race and class. Drawing heavily on cultural theory, Espiritu exposes the binary oppositions that underlie representations of Asian American gender and sexuality.

About the Author

Yen Le Espiritu, is professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego, has written on ethnicity, immigration and race relations. Originally from Vietnam, she is the author of Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities and Filipino American Lives.