A01=Chien-Juh Gu
Asia
Author_Chien-Juh Gu
Category=JBFH
Category=JBSF1
Category=JBSL
Category=JMH
citizenship
culture
dependent visas
Egalitarianism
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnicity
ethnographic observations
family
Fighting for Dignity and Respect in Racialized America
gender
green card
history
immigrant
immigrant influence
immigration
injustice
interviews
life histories
mental health
middle-class
migration
patriarchy
people of color
racism
resilience
self
settlement
social and psychological effects of immigration
social justice
suffering
Taiwan
Taiwanese
Taiwanese American
visa
women
women of color
work
Product details
- ISBN 9780813586069
- Weight: 367g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 22 Jan 2018
- Publisher: Rutgers University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
The Resilient Self explores how international migration re-shapes women’s senses of themselves. Chien-Juh Gu uses life-history interviews and ethnographic observations to illustrate how immigration creates gendered work and family contexts for middle-class Taiwanese American women, who, in turn, negotiate and resist the social and psychological effects of the processes of immigration and settlement.
Most of the women immigrated as dependents when their U.S.-educated husbands found professional jobs upon graduation. Constrained by their dependent visas, these women could not work outside of the home during the initial phase of their settlement. The significant contrast of their lives before and after immigration-changing from successful professionals to foreign housewives-generated feelings of boredom, loneliness, and depression. Mourning their lost careers and lacking fulfillment in homemaking, these highly educated immigrant women were forced to redefine the meaning of work and housework, which in time shaped their perceptions of themselves and others in the family, at work, and in the larger community.
Most of the women immigrated as dependents when their U.S.-educated husbands found professional jobs upon graduation. Constrained by their dependent visas, these women could not work outside of the home during the initial phase of their settlement. The significant contrast of their lives before and after immigration-changing from successful professionals to foreign housewives-generated feelings of boredom, loneliness, and depression. Mourning their lost careers and lacking fulfillment in homemaking, these highly educated immigrant women were forced to redefine the meaning of work and housework, which in time shaped their perceptions of themselves and others in the family, at work, and in the larger community.
CHIEN-JUH GU is an associate professor of sociology at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. She is the author of Mental Health Among Taiwanese Americans: Gender, Immigration, and Transnational Struggles.
