A Feeling of Belonging

Front matter

a feeling of belonging

ASIAN AMERICAN WOMEN'S PUBLIC CULTURE, 1930-1960

SHIRLEY JENNIFER LIM

Preface

Introduction “A Feeling of Belonging”: Chi Alpha Delta, 1928-1941

“I Protest”: Anna May Wong and the Performance of Modernity

Contested Beauty: Asian American Beauty Culture during the Cold War

Riding the Crest of an Oriental Wave: Foreign-Born Asian “Beauty”

Notes Index

About the Author vii

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Preface

To paraphrase Alice Walker citing Toni Morrison, I wished to create a book that I should have been able to read in school, but had not found.' Since there were no models for what I murkily envisioned, I considered “acceptable” topics, ranging from the social history of Chinese American women in Los Angeles to a labor/organizational history of Asian Americans and entertainment. After uncovering previously unexamined historical sources such as actress Anna May Wong’s Chinese American Paramount Studio films and the papers of the Chi Alpha Delta sorority, my topic finally resonated with me and evolved into an analysis of Asian American women’s reworking of American cultural practices during an age of racial segregation and immigration exclusion. As an Indonesian American woman, which signifies that I come from a numerically small American racial minority group, I did not grow up with Asian-ethnic community practices and was fascinated when I discovered their historical prominence in the mid-twentieth century.

My own life history influenced how I understand the importance of cultural practices for female racial minorities. Having lived outside the United States for most of my childhood, I became acutely aware that despite my being born in the United States, people were not willing to grant me my birthright of cultural American citizenship. Rather, I had to earn it. The way I proved my Americanness on the playgrounds of Scotland and Libya despite my Asian face was to speak the latest American slang and show that my lunch box contained Kool-Aid and Toll House cookies, to wear Wrangler jeans. By showing my Americanness through my cultural knowledge, I gained prestige on those playgrounds. My successful displays of being American resulted in my entire class at the Oil Companies’ School in Tripoli, Libya, voting me the coveted title of seventh-grade Valentine’s Day Dance Queen. As the daughter of people who had come of age under Dutch colonialism and subsequent Indonesian independence, I vii viii | Preface was haunted by the political implications of cultural practices: namely, that culture had the ability to grant power, prestige, rights, and privileges to those who could master its symbolism, yet that such cultural fluency did not always signify capitulation to the dominant order.

Given these experiences, as a scholar I am attuned to the perils and promises of Asian American women’s self-representations of gender and race through the remaking of mainstream culture. Although it is a serious work of American history, this book risks condemnation or trivialization, for it focuses on a marginalized group in American society, Asian American women, as they perform “inauthentic” activities. In selecting this topic, I hope to validate creative and risk-taking subjects of scholarly inquiry.

This work comes from one of the deepest impulses I know, that of survival. In times of trouble that come from facing life as a racial minority woman, clothes, books, movies, magazines, gossip, and get-togethers have all jostled me out of paralysis and prompted me to lumber out of bed in the morning and face the world. For anyone who has endured the same, this book is for you.

It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge all the individuals and institutions that have made this work possible. Especially vital have been the Chi Alpha Delta Collection, University Archives, UCLA; the Japanese American National Museum; the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences; and the UCLA Newspaper and Periodicals Collections. Also of great help have been the New York Public Library, the Chicago Historical Society, the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, the San Francisco Public Library, the Los Angeles Public Library, and the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California. I also thank the following for their support of this project: the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, the Nuala McGann Drescher Foundation, the Institute of American Cultures, and the United University Professions.

Many thanks to the women who made my research possible: Lulu Kwan, Bessie Loo, Beulah Quo, Linda Yuen, Frances Kitagawa.

This work benefited greatly from the comments and questions of Valerie Matsumoto, Matthew Christensen, Sharon Traweek, King-kok Cheung, Shirley Hune, Gail Nomura, Jennifer Lee, Min Zhou, Amanda Frisken, Peggy Pascoe, Vicki L. Ruiz, Kathleen Wilson, Valerie Smith, Ellen Carol DuBois, Kerwin Klein, Gordon Chang, Jaime Cardenas, Michelle Moravec, Arleen G. de Vera, Edith Chen, Dorinne Kondo, and the Asian

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American Women’s Writing Group of New York City: Lok Siu, Sanda Lwin, Mary Lui, Sandhya Shukla, Evelyn Chi’en, Susette Min, Cynthia Tolentino, Shuang Shen, Mae Ngai, Grace Hong, Juliana Chang, and Lisa Yun. Special thanks to my series editor Scott Sandage, to Eric Zinner and Emily Park, and to my anonymous readers at NYU Press.

For intellectual sustenance I would like to recognize Nancy Tomes, Susan Englander, John Durham, Katherine King, Sondra Hale, Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi, Gisele Fong, Dean Toji, Muriel McClendon, Iona Man- Cheong, Marci Lobel, Thomas Klubock, Janet Clarke, Young-sun Hong, Karen Leong, Lloys Frates, Mary Dillard, Daphne Brooks, and Judy Wu. For making this endeavor worthwhile, thank you to all my graduate and undergraduate students at SUNY Stony Brook and UCLA. Last but not least, my eternal gratitude goes to my family for encouraging me to follow my heart.

A Feeling of Belonging is dedicated to the memory of my grandmothers, Gertruda Dermawan and Winifred Sunataraja, and to Joy Adams Slingerland.