This volume collects the letters written over a thirty-year period by a second generation Chinese American woman, Flora Belle Jan (1906–50). Born in California to immigrant parents and educated at Berkeley and the University of Chicago, Jan raised three children with her husband Charles Wang and worked as a journalist in both the United States and China. Written during the years 1918–48, these letters offer unique insight into the social and political situation of educated, middle-class, professional Chinese American women in the early twentieth century. Literate, candid, and charming, they convey the intellectual curiosity and perspicacity of a vivacious and ambitious woman while tracing her engagement with two different worlds.| Contents Preface Acknowledgments Editorial note Introduction Part I: California 1. One?s True Friend 2. Wild to Go 3. All Chinatown Is Horrified Part II: Chicago 4. A Plunge into Domesticity 5. Life Gives Me a Heartache 6. Paying for the Follies of My Youth Part III: China 7. I Prefer American Shoes 8. A Straw in the Wind 9. Chasing Mirages 10. I Have Been Loyal to China Epilogue Appendix: Publications of Flora Belle Jan Notes Index |"This is a story of a woman living between the two cultures of China and the United States, told in a moving and often heartrending manner. Flora Belle Jan is an exceptional woman who portrays many of the problems of her generation."—Sue Fawn Chung, author of Chinese American Death Rituals: Respecting the Ancestors
|Fleur Yano is a professor emerita of physics and astronomy at California State University, Los Angeles, and a daughter of Flora Belle Jan. Saralyn Daly is a professor emerita of English at California State University, Los Angeles, and the author of the biography Katherine Mansfield. Judy Wu is an associate professor of history at The Ohio State University and the author of Doctor Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: The Life of a Wartime Celebrity.