Farming the Home Place - by Valerie J Matsumoto (Hardcover)

About the Book

In 1919, against a backdrop of a long history of anti-Asian nativism, a handful of Japanese families established Cortez Colony in a bleak pocket of the San Joachin Valley. Valerie Matsumoto chronicles conflicts within the community as well as...

Book Synopsis

In 1919, against a backdrop of a long history of anti-Asian nativism, a handful of Japanese families established Cortez Colony in a bleak pocket of the San Joachin Valley. Valerie Matsumoto chronicles conflicts within the community as well as obstacles from without as the colonists responded to the challenges of settlement, the setbacks of the Great Depression, the hardships of World War II internment, and the opportunities of postwar reconstruction. Tracing the evolution of gender and family roles of members of Cortez as well as their cultural, religious, and educational institutions, she documents the persistence and flexibility of ethnic community and demonstrates its range of meaning from geographic location and web of social relations to state of mind.

Review Quotes

Farming the Home Place, enriched by material gathered from over eighty interviews that supplement research into local archival and manuscript collections, is a sensitive, subtle, even understated book. It will speak to a wide variety of audiences, both academic and popular, for its implications are many for the understanding of the nature of community and ethnicity in American life.

Carefully researched, tightly written, well organized, and intelligently interpreted.... An excellent text for classroom assignment.

Part oral history, part sociology, Farming the Home Place is the chronicle of three generations in the life of a Japanese-American farming community in California's San Joachin Valley. Matsumoto writes clearly, knowledgeably, and with affection for her subject, weaving the story of Cortez, a seventy-four-year-old planned agricultural colony, into the larger tapestry of twentieth-century Japanese-American experience. Her extensive interviews with dozens of Cortez residents hep create a living portrait of a stable yet constantly evolving community.

About the Author

Valerie J. Matsumoto is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles.