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

The crippling custom of footbinding is the thematic touchstone for Judy Yung's engrossing study of Chinese American women during the first half of the twentieth century. Using this symbol of subjugation to examine social change in the lives of these women, she shows the stages of "unbinding" that occurred in the decades between the turn of the century and the end of World War II.

The setting for this captivating history is San Francisco, which had the largest Chinese population in the United...