January 16, 1996 Contact: Barbara McKenna (408/459-2495)
AUTHOR OF BOOK ON HISTORY OF CHINESE AMERICAN WOMEN IN SAN FRANCISCO TO PRESENT TALK AND BOOKSIGNING
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SANTA CRUZ, CA--Author Judy Yung will discuss her new book and sign copies at a 7:30 p.m. talk on Wednesday, January 31, at the Capitola Book Cafe, 1475 41st Ave. Yung's book, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), was released in November in both cloth ($45) and paper ($15.95). For information on the talk, call (408) 462-4415.
For more than a thousand years foot-binding was an obligatory practice for genteel women of China. Although bound feet marked women as well-to-do members of society, the custom also necessitated a cloistered and dependent life. Yung uses foot-binding as a central theme to trace the stages of "unbinding" that took place in the lives of Chinese women immigrants in San Francisco from the late 1800s through the end of World War II.
Yung, an assistant professor of American studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, presents an engaging history by supplementing factual information with case studies, profiles, and oral histories of women who lived in those times. Her facts were meticulously researched using U.S. census and immigration documents, Chinese- and English-language newspapers, and oral history. The text is complemented by more than 30 photos. Citing such Chinese proverbs as, "The absence of talent in a woman is a virtue," Yung follows the changes in lifestyles and identities that occurred among the first immigrants and their daughters and later immigrants.
Yung is also the author of Chinese Women of America: A Pictorial History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986) and, with Him Mark Lai and Genny Lim, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), winner of the 1982 Before Columbus Foundation Book Award.
This release is also available on the World Wide Web at UCSC's "Services for Journalists" site (http://www.ucsc.edu/news/journalist.html).
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