Chrissy Yee Lau, "New Women of Empire: Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America" (U Washington Press, 2022)

New Books in Asian American Studies

This episode, which is co-hosted with Mika Thornburg, features a conversation with Dr. Chrissy Yee Lau, the author of the newly published New Women of Empire: Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America (U Washington Press, 2022). The book centers the compelling life histories of five young women and men in Los Angeles to illuminate how they negotiated overlapping imperialisms through new gender roles. With extensive youth networks and the largest Japanese population in the United States, Los Angeles was a critical site of transnational relations, and in the 1920s and '30s Japanese American youth became politicized through active participation in Christian civic organizations. By racially uplifting their peers through youth clubs, athletics, and cultural ambassadorship, these young leaders reshaped Japanese and US imperialisms and provided the groundwork for future expressions of model minority respectability and Japanese American feminisms.

Dr. Lau is an assistant professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. Her research and teaching interests include Asian American History, U.S. Women's History, California History, and Public History. She is also co-editor of The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice.

Donna Doan Anderson (she/her) is a PhD candidate in History and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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