About the Book

This book is about gender and gendered relations in Cantonese society, set within the transnational/diasporic framework of later Nineteenth and early Twentieth-Century China and America. Part I is about Cantonese womenfolk, as viewed within the context of female institutionalized bondage with socially imposed disabilities, of which there were two kinds: 1) dejure or sanctioned bondage, involving Courtesans, prostitutes, slave girls, and mooi-jai (young female indentured domestic servants); and 2) defacto or disguised bondage, which included, wives, concubines, and daughters. Part II discusses Cantonese menfolk, relative to prevailing ideas about what constituted Chinese ideals of masculinity and how these notions impacted various forms and avenues of homosocial engagement, some of which embodied some homosexual identifications, with different degrees of performance, and relationships. This book is the result of forty-five years of research and writing. It is the second of several volumes of a new series, entitled The Gum-Shaan Chronicles: The Early History of Cantonese-Chinese America, 1850-1900.

About the Author

Douglas W. Lee is a second-generation Cantonese-Chinese American, trained as a historian of Modern China, with a special research interest in early Chinese American History. He earned a BA at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon (1967); an MA at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1969); a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1979); and JD from Lewis and Clark Law School, Portland, Oregon (1988). In 1979-1980, Lee was the cofounder and first national President of the National Association for Asian American Studies. In 1981, he was cofounder of the Chinese Historical Society of the Pacific Northwest, and the first editor of its journal, The Annals of the Chinese Historical Society of the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, Washington).