The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong, and the Transformation of American Orientalism / Edition 1

by Karen J. Leong

Overview

Throughout the history of the United States, images of China have populated the American imagination. Always in flux, these images shift rapidly, as they did during the early decades of the twentieth century. In this erudite and original study, Karen J. Leong explores the gendering of American orientalism during the 1930s and 1940s. Focusing on three women who were popularly and publicly associated with China—Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, and Mayling Soong—Leong shows how each negotiated what it meant to be American, Chinese American, and Chinese against the backdrop of changes in the United States as a national community and as an international power.

The China Mystique illustrates how each of these women encountered the possibilities as well as the limitations of transnational status in attempting to shape her own opportunities. During these two decades, each woman enjoyed expanding visibility due to an increasingly global mass culture, rising nationalism in Asia, the emergence of the United States from the shadows of imperialism to world power, and the more assertive participation of women in civic and consumer culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520244238
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	07/25/2005
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	260
Sales rank:	874,969
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Karen J. Leong is Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at Arizona State University

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

1. Gendering American Orientalism
2. Pearl Sydenstricker Buck
3. Anna May Wong
4. Mayling Soong
5. Transforming American National Identity—The China Mystique

Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index