Asian American Women: The Frontiers Reader

Asian American Women brings together landmark scholarship about Asian American women that has appeared in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies over the last twenty-five years. The essays, written by established and emerging scholars, made a significant impact in the fields of Asian American studies, ethnic studies, women’s studies, American studies, history, and pedagogy. The scholarship is still relevant today—broadening our critical understanding of Asian American women’s resistance to the forces of racism, patriarchy, militarism, cultural imperialism, neocolonialism, and narrow forms of nationalism.

The essays in this collection reveal the experiences and struggles of Asian American women within a global political, economic, cultural, and historical context. The essays focus on diverse issues, including unconventional Asian American women of the early 1900s; the life of a Japanese war bride; possibilities for transnational Asian American feminism; the politics of Vietnamese American beauty pageants; mixed race identities and bisexual identities; Filipina healthcare providers; South Asian American representations; and a multiracial exchange on pedagogical interventions. The collection represents the rich diversity of Asian American women’s lives in hope of creating a new transnational space of critical dialogue, strategic resistance, and alliance building.