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Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism
As exemplified by Madame Butterfly , East-West relations have often been expressed as the relations between the masculine, dominant West and the feminine, submissive East. Yet, this binary model does not account for the important role of white women in the construction of Orientalism. Mari Yoshihara's study examines a wide range of white women who were attracted to Japan and China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and shows how, through their engagement with Asia, these women found new forms of expression, power, and freedom that were often denied to them in other realms of their lives in America. She demonstrates how white women's attraction to Asia shaped and was shaped by a complex mix of exoticism for the foreign, admiration for the refined, desire for power and control, and love and compassion for the people of Asia. Through concrete historical narratives and careful textual analysis, she examines the ideological context for America's changing discourse
about Asia and interrogates the power and appeal--as well as the problems and limitations--of American Orientalism for white women's explorations of their identities. Combining the analysis of race and gender in the United States and the study of U.S.-Asian relations, Yoshihara's work represents the transnational direction of scholarship in American Studies and U.S. history. In addition, this interdisciplinary work brings together diverse materials and approaches, including cultural history, material culture, visual arts, performance studies, and literary analysis.
Embracing the East was the winner of the 2003 Hiroshi Shimizu Award of the Japanese Association for American Studies (best book in American Studies by a junior member of the association).
about Asia and interrogates the power and appeal--as well as the problems and limitations--of American Orientalism for white women's explorations of their identities. Combining the analysis of race and gender in the United States and the study of U.S.-Asian relations, Yoshihara's work represents the transnational direction of scholarship in American Studies and U.S. history. In addition, this interdisciplinary work brings together diverse materials and approaches, including cultural history, material culture, visual arts, performance studies, and literary analysis.
Embracing the East was the winner of the 2003 Hiroshi Shimizu Award of the Japanese Association for American Studies (best book in American Studies by a junior member of the association).
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
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About the author
Mari Yoshihara
12 books3 followersMari Yoshihara was born in New York City and grew up in Tokyo. She attended high school in Yokohama and graduated from the University of Tokyo before earning a master's degree and doctorate from Brown University. Yoshihara has taught at the University of Hawaii at Manoa since 1997 and served as chief editor of the journal American Quarterly since 2014.
She played the piano since the age of three, but took a break from playing while in graduate school. As an adult, she has entered competitions like the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition as an amateur, and won in the 2014 Aloha International Piano Festival's amateur division.
She played the piano since the age of three, but took a break from playing while in graduate school. As an adult, she has entered competitions like the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition as an amateur, and won in the 2014 Aloha International Piano Festival's amateur division.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 19, 2008
Mari Yoshihara’s book Embracing the East offers important insight on the history of white women and consumption of Asian products and people. This book contributes to a body of work on Orientalism, a term she defines as, “Western ways of perceiving, understanding, and representing the “Orient” that are founded upon the material reality of unequal power relations between the West and the East and upon the belief in the essential difference between the two” (3). By adding white women to the literature on Orientalism, she is extending the work of scholars such as Edward Said who focused mostly on white men and Orientalism. In her introduction she discusses how Orientalism has participated in the construction of the West as “virile” and “masculine” and the East as “passive” and “feminine” (4). By expanding Orientalism to white women, she challenged this dichotomy and makes room in Orientalist discourse for white women to find agency, even if that agency allows her access to the role of oppressor. Yoshihara balances her study of Orientalism by white women by focusing on popular culture representations such as the character of Mrs. Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly and to real white women through history who consumed Asia. Yoshihara believes that it is important to focus on these real white women because of their unique role as purchasers and trend-setters in the realm of Asian goods (8).
In Part One, titled, “Materializing Asia,” the author “looks at white women’s interactions with Asia as objects and tools by focusing on material culture and visual arts as a site of Orientalism” (10). She looks at white women art matrons, such as Isabella Stewart Gardner, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and Lucy Truman Aldrich, and their roles in bringing Asian arts to America. In the second chapter she focuses on three white women artists who used Asian material in their own art, such as, Mary Cassatt, Bertha Lum, and Helen Hyde. She argues that “through the deployment of Asian materials, women artists gained a new way of seeing the world and new forms of power” (49). She suggests that white women artists who worked with Asian craftsmen in learning methods and forms of Asian art reinforced the power relationship between the West and the East and this power allowed white women access to power they would otherwise not have available to them as women.
In Part Two, titled, “Performing Asia” Yoshihara looks at the “diverse ways in which white American women ‘performed’ what they understood to be Asian-ness by engaging in different forms of racial and cultural cross-dressing” (10). In the third chapter, she focuses on white women’s theatrical performances of subservient Asian femininity and how it was used as a subject against which to “solidify their identities as modern American women” (79). In chapter four, she focuses on the poetry of Amy Lowell. She writes, “[u]nderstanding the role of Asia in Lowell’s poetry offers an insight into the cultural work of Orientalism, particularly its politics of gender, in American literary modernism” (103). In the final chapter (chapter five) of this section, Yoshihara focused on a surprising American white woman—Agnes Smedley, a radical activist, who put on the Chinese Communist uniform and joined the Chinese Revolution.
In the final section, titled, “Authorizing Asia”, Yoshihara looks at white American women who became “experts” on Asia. In the chapter six, the author focuses on Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth and in chapter seven, on Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. In these chapters she uses textual analysis to “demonstrate how the use of gender as a narrative tool and analytical category served to both revise and reinforce the dominant discourse of American Orientalism” (11).
In Part One, titled, “Materializing Asia,” the author “looks at white women’s interactions with Asia as objects and tools by focusing on material culture and visual arts as a site of Orientalism” (10). She looks at white women art matrons, such as Isabella Stewart Gardner, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and Lucy Truman Aldrich, and their roles in bringing Asian arts to America. In the second chapter she focuses on three white women artists who used Asian material in their own art, such as, Mary Cassatt, Bertha Lum, and Helen Hyde. She argues that “through the deployment of Asian materials, women artists gained a new way of seeing the world and new forms of power” (49). She suggests that white women artists who worked with Asian craftsmen in learning methods and forms of Asian art reinforced the power relationship between the West and the East and this power allowed white women access to power they would otherwise not have available to them as women.
In Part Two, titled, “Performing Asia” Yoshihara looks at the “diverse ways in which white American women ‘performed’ what they understood to be Asian-ness by engaging in different forms of racial and cultural cross-dressing” (10). In the third chapter, she focuses on white women’s theatrical performances of subservient Asian femininity and how it was used as a subject against which to “solidify their identities as modern American women” (79). In chapter four, she focuses on the poetry of Amy Lowell. She writes, “[u]nderstanding the role of Asia in Lowell’s poetry offers an insight into the cultural work of Orientalism, particularly its politics of gender, in American literary modernism” (103). In the final chapter (chapter five) of this section, Yoshihara focused on a surprising American white woman—Agnes Smedley, a radical activist, who put on the Chinese Communist uniform and joined the Chinese Revolution.
In the final section, titled, “Authorizing Asia”, Yoshihara looks at white American women who became “experts” on Asia. In the chapter six, the author focuses on Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth and in chapter seven, on Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. In these chapters she uses textual analysis to “demonstrate how the use of gender as a narrative tool and analytical category served to both revise and reinforce the dominant discourse of American Orientalism” (11).
January 9, 2016
YESSSS. White women's role in orientalism.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews