Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco

"A stunning and sweeping piece of historical scholarship. It represents a major contribution to research in U.S. women's history."—Vicki L. Ruiz, author of Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing
Industry, 1930-1950

"Judy Yung's latest and most impressive work demonstrates how an engaged, community-based scholar can reclaim an experience otherwise silenced."—John Kuo Wei Tchen, author of Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown

"Judy Yung possesses a humane and deep feeling for her subjects. A good listener, she allows these women to emerge in her pages as interesting and complex. Sweeping in chronology and comprehensive in scope, her study invites us to reach toward an intricate understanding of the making of our multicultural society."—Ronald Takaki, author of Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans

"Yung's book combines the richness of a community study, including engaging cameo biographies, with a broad survey of Chinese American women's history."—Mari Jo Buhle, author of Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920

"This is passionate and illuminating scholarship that adds a needed dimension to the discourse of women of color in general, and Chinese American women in particular."—Paula Giddings, author of When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America

"Students and teachers of U.S. women's history will be grateful for Yung's compelling overview of the history of Chinese American women and for the ways her focus on San Francisco brings women's community, family, and personal conflicts to life. A memorable and important book."—Kathryn Kish Sklar, author of Florence Kelley and Nation's Work: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900

Library Journal

Yung (Chinese Women of America: A Pictorial History, Univ. of Washington Pr., 1986) has written a thorough and engrossing social history of Chinese women in San Francisco, from the turn of the century through the end of World War II. Using oral history interviews, unpublished autobiographies, government census reports, and English- and Chinese-language newspapers, Yung illuminates the larger canvas of social change with the stories of specific women from the first and second generations and their quests to improve their lives. The book is particularly valuable for its analysis of class differences within the Chinese community (merchant, peasant, bound servant, etc.), which created even more obstacles for Chinese women to overcome. This work offers engrossing reading; highly recommended for academic and public libraries.Katharine L. Kan, Aiea P.L., Hawaii

Judy Yung is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Chinese Women of America: A Pictorial History (1986) and the coauthor of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island (1980, 1991), which won the Before Columbus Foundation Book Award.